


no use going back to yesterday

by fictionalcandie



Series: Kaleidoscope [1]
Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Community: kradambigbang, First Kiss, M/M, Marking, Possessive Behavior, Rape/Non-con Elements, Romance, Vampire Covens, Vampires, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:31:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris Allen’s biggest concerns used to be trying not to fail his classes, and his best friend wanting to find them matching trophy boyfriends. Now his biggest concerns are more like trying to find his best friend, and this scary hot vampire leader guy wanting to put his mouth on Kris’s neck all the time without Kris’s permission. At least he’s helping Kris look, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no use going back to yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [kradambigbang](http://kradambigbang.livejournal.com), based on [a prompt](http://fictionalcandie.dreamwidth.org/6478.html?thread=44878#cmt44878) from an unwritten-writing-meme months ago. [solarbaby614](http://solarbaby614.livejournal.com) was my artist — be sure to check out her snazzy work ([on LJ](http://solarbaby614.livejournal.com/108664.html) or [on DW](http://solarbaby614.dreamwidth.org/114533.html)) and tell her what you think!! :D
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, the ever-helpful [duva](http://duva.livejournal.com), for encouragement and support while writing this, and also for catching all those mistakes I invariably ignore because that’s not the _fun_ part of writing, heh. ♥ Of course, I can’t resist fiddling, and there are well over a hundred words more in here since she last went over it, so, seriously, the remaining mistakes? Not her fault.

  


> _“But it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”_  
>  —Alice, **Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland**

* * *

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Kris manages to mutter. His face is probably flaming. He’s not used to clubs, not used to _dancehall dives_ as his grandpa would say. He’s not used to this much _skin_. What’s the etiquette for a place like this, anyway? Is he even _supposed_ to be apologizing for bumping into a guy and accidentally groping his crotch? How do you _say_ that? ‘Sorry my hand was on your dick’?

Kris couldn’t say that with a straight face.

“Oh, sweetie.” The guy tilts his head, blond fringe falling away from his face, and gives Kris a slow once-over that raises goosebumps on the back of his neck. “You’re just perfect, aren’t you?”

Kris’s eyes widen. “Uh. No?”

A black-nailed hand curls around Kris’s elbow. He tries to pull away, but the grip is too strong; it feels _unbreakable_. The goosebumps spread down Kris’s spine.

“Come with me,” says the blond, smiling closed-mouthed. He takes a drag off the not-a-cigarrette-what in his other hand, and blows the oddly scented smoke of it _right in Kris’s face_ , leaving him blinking, dazed. Then, there’s gentle pressure, and Kris is being towed across the dancefloor, people parting like the tide falling away, and Kris’s head feels a little fuzzy— how did they get on this side of the room?

Suddenly, close up, there’s a black door with a glittering, calligraphy A in the center, and a big guy blocking their way to it. “Tommy?” asks the doorman, thick arms crossed over his chest. “What’re you doing?”

“I’ve got a present, Jimmy,” says the blond with his hands on Kris. He smiles again, and for a second Kris thinks there’s the flash of teeth, but it’s gone as fast as it came. “For the Boss Man.”

There are capital letters. Kris can _hear_ them.

“Oh.”

The doorman looks him over, too. He reacts with the same sort of delighted, toothless smile as the blond— Tommy.

Kris suppresses a shiver, and doesn’t know why.

“Go ahead, sir,” says the doorman, and Tommy drags Kris through the door before he can properly remember that he’d like to protest this treatment.

Beyond the door there are long, dimly lit hallways, people leaning against the walls in twos and threes, a hazy layer of funny-smelling smoke swirling around them — and just like Tommy’s not-cigarrette it’s not pot, Kris knows what that’s like and this is _not it_ , too sweet and too heavy. He’s seeing stars after two breaths. The loud music from the club is barely audible back here, just a heavy thumping backbeat that seems to take on a visible aura if Kris tries to focus on it through the spots in his vision.

Tommy leads them down Kris doesn’t know how many corridors, takes turns Kris can’t follow and doesn’t remember. They go through another door, with a bigger A on the front, and the room is big, it’s huge, and full, people scattered everywhere — pretty and barely dressed, leather shining, buckles and jewelry gleaming — but Kris’s eyes go past them all, get stuck on the man in black lounging in the big ornate chair.

 _Boss Man_ , surely.

“Boss,” says Tommy, to the man on the throne-like chair. He’s grinning properly now, and there’s something _wrong_ with his teeth, but Kris can’t seem to make his eyes stay focused long enough to figure out what it is; no matter how hard, how often he tries to drag them away, they go back to the boss man. “I brought you something.”

“Did you,” the boss man says. His voice is low, a musical purr that makes Kris’s chest hurt.

“I found him wandering through the dance floor.” Tommy nudges Kris, and he stumbles forward half a step, drawing the boss man's gaze.

“Oh,” the boss man says, “oh _yes_.”

He swings his leg off the armrest, lifting a hand as he gets to his feet, and something funny happens to everybody in the room — they go sinking to their knees like their strings have been cut, every single one of them, Tommy included. Kris sways on his feet but doesn’t go down, Tommy’s grip abruptly gone and nothing keeping him up but stubbornness.

Then the boss man is there, right in front of Kris, inches away.

His eyes glitter, blue and huge, unreal.

“I’m Adam.”

“Hi?” says Kris, blinking dumbly.

Adam’s hands land on Kris’s shoulders. They’re heavy, too heavy, _impossibly_ heavy, Kris can barely hold himself up under the weight of them, he’s going to—

“You should kneel,” Adam says, gentle.

Kris does.

“Good boy.” The hands drift smoothly to cup Kris’s cheeks, framing his face, and they’re not unbearably heavy anymore, instead brushing lightly over Kris’s skin, comforting and chilling at once.

“What’s your name?”

Staring up at him, glassy-eyed and trembling, Kris whispers, “Kris. Kris Allen.”

Adam smiles, and all Kris can see are fangs.

“Welcome down the rabbit hole, Kris Allen.”

—

Kris wakes up in his own bed on Saturday. He’s alone, in his own room at his parents’ house, and he has no memory of anything the night before after kneeling at Adam’s feet and watching him show off wicked-looking vampire teeth.

“I dreamt it,” he says.

It doesn’t sound any more convincing hanging in the air of the empty room than it did in his head.

“Vampires aren’t real,” he tries. “I dreamt all that.”

It doesn’t help.

With a shudder, Kris forces himself to stop thinking about it. He rolls out of bed—

and gasps, freezing on all fours next to his bed, pain running down his body.

“Shit,” he says, shuddering more. There’s a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, goosebumps all down his spine. “Shit, what the _hell_?”

It takes a while to convince himself that he wants to try getting up again, and even then, it’s only hearing Mama calling from downstairs — and the humiliating fear that she might come up and find him like this, on the floor, in pain, for no reason — that gets him up.

Even going carefully, it hurts a little to move, his whole body feeling heavy and leaden, and he _aches_ in his hips, the worst pulled-muscle feeling he’s ever experienced.

He doesn’t attempt to change out of his pajamas (that he still has no memory of putting on the night before), just rakes his hands through his hair a few times.

“You’re fine,” he tells himself, ignoring the painful pull in the muscles along his ribs, from lifting his arms. “You’re— It’s nothing, it’s fine, everything’s fine.”

There are dark smudges around his wrists, circling them completely, standing out stark against his faded tan.

He swallows hard.

Then he tugs his sleeves down to cover the marks, and goes downstairs.

—

“What happened to your neck?” asks Mama, as soon as she sees him. She frowns at him, disapprovingly.

“What?” says Kris, confused. All the places his body feels weird and foreign, and _hurt_ , and she’s talking about his _neck_? “What about my neck?”

“That mark,” she says. “Don’t tell me Katy O’Connell gave you that.”

Which is just _unfair_ in how unlikely it is right now, and Kris would’ve expected Mama to know that. “I told you, Mama, Katy and I aren’t together,” is all he says.

He pretends he can’t hear Daniel, across the table, snickering at him.

“Who’ve you been letting bruise you up, then?” and she sounds so very disapproving. Kris cringes.

“I didn’t—” but Kris stops, staring, because he leaned carefully over and got a look at his reflection in the gleaming surface of the tea kettle.

There’s a pattern of bruises on the right side of his neck, perfect little purple marks, and looking at them, Kris could swear he feels a hand there, holding him still. On the other side, just under his jaw, is a pair of tiny, neat little puncture marks, scabbed over. She doesn’t seem to have seen them yet, though, which is a small mercy.

“I don’t know where that came from,” he says, and he really _doesn’t_ know, but it doesn’t take a genius to _guess_. It doesn’t even take a Skarsgård fan. Kris isn’t big on Supernatural or fantasy books or anything like that, and even he can put something like _this_ together.

Except that vampires _aren’t real_.

And besides, he ended last night alone, at home.

Didn’t he?

—

Under Mama’s disapproving eyes, Kris manages to choke down a piece of toast and two slices of bacon, less than a third of his usual breakfast — and he can barely stand to do that much, nearly gagging the whole time, imagining that every bite presses on the bruises on his neck from the inside as he swallows.

“You aren’t hungry?” asks Mama, with a frown, when Kris stands up to leave the table, trying not to let it show how every movement twinges.

“I have homework,” he lies. She doesn’t look like she believes him, but she doesn’t try to stop him, and he escapes back up to his room with a glass of orange juice he doesn’t intend to drink.

Being in his room doesn’t make him feel any less like there are eyes on him, watching him, _judging_ him. He still hurts, everywhere, and has no memories that would explain why — has no memories from last night at _all_ , not past impossibly blue eyes and gleaming white teeth smiling down at him, his knees against cold floor.

There are goosebumps down his spine again, worse than just after he woke up.

“You’re fine. _Everything_ ’s fine, it’s all fine. You’re just— imagining. It’s _fine_ , Kristopher.”

He goes looking for his clothes from yesterday, the ones he doesn’t remember taking off to change into his pajamas. He finds them in the top of his laundry hamper.

His first instinct is to pull them out, check them over and make sure there’s nothing odd about them. He almost doesn’t do it. Then he does, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

The smoke from the back corridors of the club lingers on them, heavy and fragrant; one moderately deep breath of the stuff, second-hand, is enough to make Kris start feeling light-headed.

He shakes the clothes out, holding them at arms length, hoping to dispel the scent. As he does, his eyes catch on a discolored patch at the neck of the t-shirt, brown and stiff, and he leans in to get a better look.

His breath lodges in his throat, and he drops the clothes with a horrified gasp.

It’s blood.

Kris staggers over to his bed, lets his legs give out under him, and sinks to the edge of it. His clothes from last night are a heap on the floor, and the bloodstains — more than one, God, there’s _more than one_ , the brown patch looking even darker against the blue denim of his jeans — are visible even from across the room, and he can’t stand to look at them, can’t make his eyes go anywhere else. He covers his face with shaking hands.

“Vampires aren’t _real_ ,” he whispers, helplessly. “They _aren’t_.”

It doesn’t comfort him at all.

—

Kris takes a shower, and it helps, the hot water loosening his muscles, easing the ache of them. It makes his body feel more like he’s used to, flesh the right shape and size for his bones. It makes the punctures on his neck sting, though— and calls his attention to another pair of scabbed-over marks on the inside of his thigh, when they sting too. They’re… pretty high up. Really high up, actually, close to— to his—

Kris has never even been kissed, he hasn’t ever— Nobody’s ever even touched him there, not to— He can’t remember, but the marks are right there, he’s not imagining them, which means someone put them there, someone _has_ touched him— and his hips feel strained, like the time he tried to do the splits deeper than Daniel, but worse— and _Kris hasn’t ever_ —

He loses a few minutes, then, and when he comes back to himself he’s sitting, shaking, on the shower floor, his legs drawn up to his chest and his hands clenched around his knees.

Then, gritting his teeth, he stretches out his legs, unfolds his body and checks it over, carefully. He won’t be surprised about anything else, he _can’t_ be, he can’t take it.

The punctures — the _bites_ ; he’s going to call them what they are, even if what they are doesn’t make _sense_ — on his neck and thigh are the only ones. The bruises on his neck and wrists are the only ones. Well, they’re the only ones he can see, so. He’s just going to assume, for his own sanity, that they are.

—

It’s a little before midnight when Kris gets to the street the club’s on. It’s only half built-up, one side converted industrial-style buildings, the other side vacant lots gone derelict. The word ‘seedy’ comes to mind.

He hides his bike in some bushes across from the club because there’s no bike rack, then stands outside for almost twenty minutes, staring at the brilliant neon, _Kaleidoscope_ lit up and suddenly a thousand times more menacing than it had seemed last night, before he gets up the nerve to actually go in.

The line is short, and just like last night, the bouncer at the front door doesn't even ask to see Kris's fake ID, and it's only _now_ that it makes Kris nervous.

He doesn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be here last night, either, but he came for a reason— and if he got what he was looking for the first time, he doesn’t _remember_ it, so it’s not like it helps him, and he. He _has_ to be here. He _needs_ to know.

The inside of the club is dim, filled with music that’s too loud, bass-heavy and thumping along with the pounding of Kris’s heart. Kris sweeps the room with his eyes, glances over the dancing crowd — this time, when he heads toward the bar, he avoids the dance floor, edging around it instead of trying to push through it.

The bartender sees him as soon as he reaches the bar. Kris _knows_ she does, because her eyes widen when they catch his.

She turns away, fast, and leans across the bar to say something to another customer. The man looks surprised, glances at Kris, then turns and hurries away from the bar.

Kris has no idea what just happened, but he has a horrible feeling that it is _very not good_ for him.

That the bartender keeps ignoring him? Only confirms that.

Kris is still standing at the bar five minutes later, trying to get her attention anyway, when somebody finally acknowledges his existence.

It isn’t the bartender.

"Brad owes me fifty dollars," a voice says by Kris's shoulder, and he turns to see the man who dragged him off the floor last night, Tommy, standing there, smirking closed-mouthed, just like before.

Tommy, at least, he remembers.

Kris fights back a shiver, and says, "What."

Tommy's hand lifts, moves like he's going to touch Kris's neck, the marks there, but he doesn't actually make contact. "You're _back_ ," he says, leaning in. His blond hair brushes the side of Kris's face, his ear. "And so _soon_."

“You thought I’d come back?”

Tommy gives him a smile, or the vague approximation thereof. What he says, inexplicably, is, "He's not here."

There’s something about the way Tommy says _he_ that raises the hair on Kris’s arms.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kris says, but his stomach is clenching hard around nothing, he feels _sick_. God, why did he come back here? He could have found a way around needing to, surely. He _should’ve_ found a way around it.

"The Boss," says Tommy, and he almost-touches Kris's neck again. "He's not here."

Blue eyes looking down at him, blue blue _too blue_.

Kris swallows. It tastes a little like bile. “Oh.”

Tommy's smile bares his teeth that look more like fangs. “But don’t worry,” he says. “You're safe.”

Kris doesn’t feel it.

“I have questions,” he says, covering his unease.

“The Boss isn’t here.”

“No, I don’t— I’m not looking for _him_ ,” Kris stammers. “I have _questions_ for—”

“The Boss isn’t here,” Tommy repeats, like he didn’t even hear Kris. “Bring your questions some other time.”

Kris opens his mouth to try asking one last time, but Tommy turns away and disappears back into the crowd. For a minute, Kris can only stare after him— and then someone’s looming next to him and grabbing his elbow. It looks like the bouncer from the front door, and he looks a lot sterner than he did when he wasn’t bothering to check Kris’s ID.

The next thing Kris knows, he’s outside the club, having it firmly but politely suggested to him that he go home.

Frustrated, and more than a little annoyed at having been brushed off, Kris drags his bike back out of the bushes, and leaves.

The whole way home, he ignores the goosebumps down his spine from the way Tommy said _the Boss isn’t here_. Like he’s the only person Kris can talk to, or something.

 _Blue blue too blue_.

—

On Sunday, Kris holds himself very still through church, so he doesn’t move wrong, pull one of his still achy muscles and cringe visibly at any unfortunate moment during the pastor's sermon or anything like that, and spends the day not meeting his family's eyes.

He wishes he could let it go. He wishes he could just repress whatever happened at the club — or repress it _harder_ , since apparently he’s already done a pretty decent job with the whole not remembering thing — and get on with his life, never think about it again.

He can’t do that.

He has to go back.

He _has_ to.

He can’t chicken out. Katy needs him.

He keeps telling himself that, as he pulls on a dark t-shirt and jeans and crawls out his window.

It’s not like he was _drugged_ , or anything.

(Well, probably.)

—

Not only does the bouncer let Kris in, despite kicking him out the night before and _still_ without asking for Kris’s ID, but he goes so far as to motion Kris forward as soon as he spots him standing nervously in the small line of city club kids.

“Wait by the bar,” he says, as Kris edges past him.

Once he gets in, Kris hesitates, biting his lip. Alone in the darkened sea of music and bodies, he thinks about ignoring the suggestion — all right, he’ll call it what it was, the _instruction_ — but eventually decides that, whatever’s going on here, he’d rather not make the people who run this place angry. Or give them any reason to hunt him down, or anything like that.

The bartender’s the same girl as the night before, but she doesn’t ignore Kris this time, just sets a glass of coke in front of him when he asks and turns away quickly.

“You were drugged, sweetie.”

Kris whirls around, shriek caught in his throat and the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

There’s a small man leaning against the bar next to him. His lips are parted just enough for Kris to make out the tips of his fangs.

His actual _fangs_. Yes.

They really don’t look fake at all.

Kris swallows hard. Okay. So. Looks like his imagination wasn’t as out of control as he thought — or else he’s just graduated to full on hallucinations, because this guy.

This is obviously a _vampire_ , not a human.

“You were drugged,” the guy repeats, and this time Kris can see the way his eyes narrow as he says it. “So what’re you doing back here. _Again_.”

“I… I _was_?” says Kris. “Drugged?”

The guy waves a hand airily. “Not the point.”

“It kind of is,” says Kris.

“It isn’t mine,” says the guy. He props one hand on his hip. “So, which are you?”

“Which _what_ am I?”

The guy raises his eyebrows. “Suicidal, or just stupid?”

“I’m not suicidal,” Kris says, his voice breaking on the last word. God, as if this experience weren’t horrifying enough, now he gets to add _hideous embarrassment_ to it.

“Well, then, it’s nice to meet you, Stupid,” says the guy. “I’m Brad.”

“I’m not stupid, either,” says Kris, but he doesn’t know if he even believes himself.

“Sure, sure.”

“Just. Look.” Kris takes a deep breath, in and out, clears his mind as best he can. “I came here for a reason, the other night, okay?”

Brad’s eyebrows go up. He looks at Kris’s face for a long moment, his expression going serious, before he speaks. “Not, I’m guessing, to get pounced?”

“No,” says Kris. He very carefully ignores any mental images produced by the way Brad just said _pounced_.

“Oh, you’re _interesting_. Go on, share with the class.”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Ada— The Boss?” and now Brad looks _really_ surprised. Great; Kris hadn’t thought through just how desperate and pathetic that statement would make him seem.

“ _No_.”

“Then who?” asks Brad, eyes narrowed.

Kris swallows, thickly, before he can make himself speak.

“My best friend.”

—

The Boss’s— Kris is pretty sure he remembers being told to call him _Adam_ so that’s what he’s gonna do— _Adam’s_ expression, when Kris repeats that for him, is. Well, Kris can’t be positive, doesn’t know enough about Adam to judge whether that’s boredom or irritation or amusement. Either way, Kris doesn’t like it, it isn’t what he’s looking for.

“Her name’s Katy O’Connell. Nobody’s seen her since Tuesday night, and nobody’s looking for her,” Kris repeats.

He’s not really sure why he’s even around the back of the Kaleidoscope building, saying this to Adam at all, but Brad had seemed to think it was a good idea, and he’s a lot stronger than he looks, so. Kris might as well say it.

After all, what’s the worst they’re gonna do? Kill him for talking?

After another moment of giving Kris that barely-not-blank look, Adam leans against the wall. “All right. Explain.”

“Usually she calls me before bed, but she didn’t on Tuesday. That happens sometimes when she’s going to a club — and her Wednesdays at school are light — so at first I didn’t worry. But then she didn’t come to school the next day at all, and since then my calls all go straight to voicemail.”

Kris pauses. Adam just stares at him. Brad makes an encouraging gesture, so Kris adds, “My calls _never_ go straight to voicemail.”

“Surely it’s happened at _some_ point,” says Adam. Kris still can’t tell what kind of expression that is on Adam’s face. He hopes that at least means Adam isn’t going to, like, drink all his blood and kill him.

“Not with Katy. I mean, sometimes it rings out,” he allows, “but she wouldn’t block me, and she doesn’t let her phone die, ever.” He has to stop and clear his throat before he says, “Always gets mad at me when I do.”

His voice breaks a little, anyway.

Adam’s eyes narrow. “So you were worried.”

It’s not exactly a question. Kris nods anyway.

“Yeah,” says Kris. “I started calling around, but none of our friends had seen her since school let out Tuesday, and her parents never answer when I call. So I went over to her hou—”

Frowning suddenly, Adam cuts him off to ask, “They don’t? Why?”

“No?” Kris shrugs, looks away, toward the back door Adam came outside through. “Does it matter?”

“It might. Answer the question.”

Kris weighs the clipped tone of Adam’s words against his own embarrassment, and decides that an impatient vampire is probably the bigger concern.

“Her parents think we spend too much time together,” he admits. “They think I’m a bad influence.”

Adam continues to not look pleased by Kris’s words, his problems, and probably his existence in general. “What happened when you went over?” he asks, somehow even more curt.

“The police were there,” says Kris.

Between one blink and the next, Adam straightens, pulling away from the wall. He stops frowning, too.

“Really.”

Kris nods again, wondering too late if maybe it was a good idea to talk about this with a bunch of _vampires_ at all. It’s probably not their sort of problem; after all, why would supernatural creatures have to worry about having their best friend go missing?

“Her parents called them,” Kris explains anyway. Now that he’s started, stopping would probably be a bad idea. He doesn’t want to seem _ungrateful_ , or anything. “She didn’t come down to breakfast Wednesday, and when her dad went to check on her, she wasn’t in her room, and the window was open a couple inches.”

“So, they reported her missing,” says Adam, nodding.

“No,” corrects Kris. “Runaway.”

Adam raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t say anything.

“The police said there was no sign of forced entry or foul play,” Kris explains, before Adam can start looking impatient again. “She’d been there when her parents went to bed the night before, and her phone and wallet were both missing. Plus she was always fighting with her sisters, she skipped school a lot, and talked all the time about going out to LA. Her parents and the police all figured she’d just run away to be an actress.”

“And they didn’t think to talk to her boyfriend? Even as a formality?”

“What, me? I’m not her boyfriend,” says Kris. He grimaces. “And they _did_ talk to me.”

“Then why didn’t they investigate?” Adam gives Kris a once-over that is clearly intended to prove some kind of point for him. It makes Kris blush, and not just from embarrassment. Not that he isn’t embarrassed, because he totally is, but, well.

Adam’s scary, yeah, but he’s also _hot_ , okay, and Kris might be imagining it, but he could have sworn that for a second there Adam looked _interested_. In _Kris_.

And there are those flashes of things he thinks he remembers from the first time he was here to consider. And what Kris thinks they mean.

“Because I admitted she did want to run away to California, that she’d been planning it,” Kris says, pleased that his voice doesn’t shake.

“And how do you know that’s not what happened, for real?”

“She wouldn’t go without me,” says Kris. Adam doesn’t look like he believes him, so Kris repeats, “She _wouldn’t_. We always planned to go together.”

“I thought you said you weren’t her boyfriend,” says Adam. His voice is bland, but Kris thinks he can hear something under it. Maybe amusement. Maybe something else.

“I’m _not_. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Says she doesn’t want anybody tying her down here.”

Adam looks skeptical.

Kris is pretty sure he knows why.

Scowling, he snaps, “Look, she thinks I’m gay, okay?”

Adam’s lips twitch.

Yeah. Kris saw that coming. Blushing harder than ever, he tries to ignore the way Adam is probably mentally laughing at him.

“She says we’re gonna go out to California and get rich and famous and get matching trophy boyfriends and— just.” Kris falters. He lifts his hands, feeling helpless, and finishes, “We’re best friends. Because she thinks I’m gay.”

“Well,” says Adam. The corner of his mouth is definitely tilted up now, and he’s clearly happy about _something_. Probably Kris’s humiliation. “ _Are_ you?”

Kris feels his cheeks heat up all over again. God, he’s never blushed this much in his _life_. He turns his eyes away. “ _Anyway_ , they said she ran away, but I didn’t believe it, so Thursday after school, while her parents were at work and her siblings were at a youth group thing for their church, I. Uh. I snuck in through her window and searched her room.”

“Aren’t you intrepid.”

And yep, the scary vampire mop boss or whatever is still amused. Awesome.

Not.

“Her dancing shoes were gone,” says Kris. “And I found a list of club names. Including Kaleidoscope.”

“You figured she’d just snuck out, after all.”

“And hadn’t come back,” Kris confirms. “So I went looking. This place was closest. You— you know what happened. After I got here.”

“Yes,” says Adam, “I do.”

There’s a few moments of silence, while Adam stares at Kris and Kris tries not to let it show how thinking about that night has made him feel nervous all over again. He looks back at the door.

“What were you _planning_ to do?” Adam eventually asks.

“Show her picture around, ask the bartenders if they’d seen her. I thought, maybe. You know. She’d got drunker than she meant to, or, or some guy had— Well. That’s what I thought _before_. But…”

“Now you think something _else_ might have happened to her,” Adam finishes for him, knowingly.

Kris licks his lips, swallows around a too-thick throat, and forces himself to ask, “ _Did_ it?”

“Well,” says Adam, smiling in a way that is the exact _opposite_ of reassuring, “not here.”

—

Adam tells Kris not to go anywhere and leaves him standing outside with Brad (Kris, uh, might have forgotten he was even _here_ , that’s just pathetic), to go do who knows what back inside.

“Are you guys sure something didn’t happen to Katy here?” Kris asks, after a few minutes, when he’s tired of the way Brad is just _smirking_ at him.

“If something did, Adam will find out about it,” Brad says. His smirk turns into a smile that shows all his teeth. “And whoever did it won’t like it when that happens.”

“Uh,” says Kris. He tries to edge away from Brad and those fangs as inconspicuously as possible. “Right.”

There’s another couple minutes of silence, but this time it’s Brad who breaks it, saying, “You know, I misjudged you, when I said what I did about you coming back. I’m sorry about that.”

Kris blinks, thrown. “Thanks? I guess?”

“I thought it was stupidity on your part,” Brad continues, like Kris didn’t say anything. “But it wasn’t. It’s bravery.”

“It isn’t,” says Kris. He avoids looking at Brad, because Brad’s tone of voice is not something Kris wants to pair with an actual _facial expression_. Hearing it is embarrassing enough, he doesn’t need to add seeing to the whole thing. “It’s just… something I have to— had to do.”

“Mm,” Brad hums, noncommittal.

“I mean, I can’t just _abandon_ her, could I,” adds Kris. He makes himself stop fidgeting with he hem of his shirt, shoves his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans instead. He risks a glance at Brad.

Brad is smirking. He isn’t saying anything, but—

“All right, I’ll tell you what.”

Kris startles, jerking away from the sudden voice behind him. But only a little. “Oh,” he blurts.

Adam, at Kris’s shoulder with _no warning_ — seriously, what the hell, Kris is _facing_ the door, it’s just a few feet away, how hadn’t he noticed Adam approaching — crosses his arms. “Because you obviously can’t be trusted not to get yourself turned into a statistic and a tragic story on the six o’clock news, I’ll see what I can do about finding your not-girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Kris says again. He’s. He’s just going to ignore that bit about the 6 o’clock news, is what he’s going to do. “Uhm. Thank you?”

“Don’t thank me,” says Adam, frowning. “Why are you thanking me?”

Kris blinks. “Because you’re going to help me?”

Except that makes Adam’s frown turn into a full-blown scowl, complete with some sort of low, threatening noise that Kris can’t identify and really wishes he couldn’t _hear_ because it’s making the hair on the back of his neck stand straight on end and that is really not a sensation he needed to ever experience.

“I just don’t want you getting eaten by someone else before I get the chance to have you again,” Adam snaps.

Oh.

Uhm.

Kris is maybe going to be sick, actually.

“So— so you did, then?” he hears someone say— and crap, oh crap, was that _him_? Oh, man, his voice hadn’t squeaked like that in _years_ , why was he even talking? “You had me?”

Adam’s face goes abruptly blank.

“Oooh,” breathes Brad, like something really, really interesting just happened. “ _Oh_.”

Kris licks his lips, and looks at Adam, and, and _waits_.

“What,” says Adam.

“You heard me,” says Kris.

“You want to know what happened, that night.”

Well, now that he’s asked, and seen the way they reacted? Kris is pretty determined to find out the answer, yeah.

“Yes,” he says, firming his jaw.

Adam smiles, the side of his mouth quirking up to just barely hint at one of his fangs. It’s not a kind expression. “Are you asking if I raped you?”

Kris’s belly cramps. But he’s brought it up, he’s _decided_ , so, “Did you?”

Adam steps closer, and closer again as Kris instinctively backs away. He’s breathing hard by the time he runs into the wall, and Adam is still smiling that twisted little smirk, arm coming up against the wall by Kris’s shoulder, boxing him in.

“I drank from you, and you were delicious,” Adam says, his voice deepening as he speaks, going lower than Kris has heard him before. He bends his head. The tip of his nose brushes Kris’s ear, his breath ruffles Kris’s hair. “You bled for me so prettily.”

 _God_. Kris’s heart feels like it’s trying to escape his chest. “And?”

Were those teeth, scraping against Kris’s neck? Maybe he was imagining them.

“And I didn’t fuck you,” says Adam.

Oh.

That’s actually. It isn’t, really, well, what he expected. Not that Kris isn’t _glad_ , not that he _wanted_ Adam to have done, well, done _that_ , but. But he _thought_ — that maybe—

Kris can’t have misinterpreted it so badly, can he?

“Y—” Kris stammers. “You didn’t?”

Abruptly, Adam pulls away, takes a step back. Only when he can’t anymore does Kris realize that he could smell Adam, crisp and strange on his tongue.

Adam raises an eyebrow. He’s not smiling anymore. “You’re cute, baby. But you’re human. I don’t have sex with humans.”

“Why not?”

It’s out before he can think to stop himself.

“Because,” Adam smiles, and his fangs are on clear display, now, “it gets _messy_.”

Kris… has no idea what to say to that.

Adam doesn’t give him a chance to, anyway.

He takes another step away from the wall, from Kris, and says to Brad, “Take him around front and make sure he leaves on his own.”

Brad nods, not smiling at all anymore. Actually, he looks a little surprised— but Kris isn’t going to think about why that might be. It’s unlikely to be anything he’d want to realize, so he refuses to.

Then, apparently, Adam’s done putting up with Kris for the evening, because he goes inside without even a single backwards glance at Kris.

—

Just when Kris is thinking that they’ll make it to where he stashed his bike in silence, he’s proven wrong, like he is about everything.

“Interesting,” says Brad, up close to his ear the way these people seem to like doing. Seriously, what’s wrong with them, have they never heard of personal space?

Kris turns around, taking a step back at the same time, so there’s some space between them again. “What,” he says, gritting his teeth.

“Adam lied.”

Kris stiffens, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest.

“He doesn’t usually bother to do that with the hu— Oh, relax,” Brad adds, lip curled up in a dismissive little sneer, when he sees Kris’s face. “He didn’t lie about _that_ , don’t worry. The worst he did was get you naked and sink his teeth in you, your virtue’s still intact.”

It takes a minute, but eventually Kris’s breathing evens back out, even though his heart is still pounding. He asks, “What was the lie, then?”

“The thing Adam didn’t say, kid,” starts Brad, which isn’t at all what Kris asked but whatever, “is that he kissed you.”

 _Kris has never been kissed_.

“He did?” Kris manages.

Brad’s smile is lightning quick and razor sharp, despite his fangs staying hidden. He watches Kris, like he’s waiting for something.

Kris sets his jaw, and makes himself demand, “What does that have to do with him lying?”

“Adam totally has sex with humans,” says Brad.

Kris’s skin prickles, goosebumps up his arms and down his neck. “Oh.”

If his stomach swoops with disappointment, well— Kris was just under the impression that someone found him at least a little attractive, and it’s natural to be disappointed that it wasn’t the truth. That’s all.

Brad lifts a hand and brushes the tip of one finger, feather-light, over the corner of Kris’s mouth.

Something hot curls in Kris’s gut, overwhelming the faint disappointment, and his cheeks flush. He’s suddenly, blindingly sure what Brad’s next words are going to be.

Brad says them, anyway.

“He doesn’t kiss them.”

—

Kris doesn’t go back to Kaleidoscope on Monday night.

He’d point to this as evidence that he’s not stupid, masochistic, or masochistically stupid, but actually he had every intention of going. Just to check in, see if Adam was _truly_ going to help, maybe have his vampires keep an eye out for Katy, then he was totally planning to leave again and start checking the other clubs on Katy’s list. That was it, really.

He falls asleep before it’s even 9pm, instead.

—

Tuesday, Kris is _going_ to make it out to keep looking. No, he _is_.

Except—

“So, I’m picking you up at six, right?” says Cale, as school is letting out.

“What?”

On Cale’s other side, Andrew rolls his eyes, and Cale says, “We’re going shopping. Because I don’t have anything to wear to homecoming on Friday. Remember?”

Kris just stares at him, confused.

“You forgot, didn’t you,” says Cale, with a sigh.

“Yeah,” says Kris, because actually, he forgot about homecoming _entirely_ , “Sorry. Uhm, sure, six. That’s… fine.”

Somehow, helping Cale find something to wear turns into a Halo tournament at Charles’s house and Kris getting home just before his curfew. In the end, he falls asleep waiting to be sure his parents are asleep, and doesn’t make any progress at all.

—

It’s been a week since anyone has seen Katy.

Kris has nightmares the whole night.

—

“Jesus, what ran you over?” John asks, during first period the next day.

Kris scowls at him blearily. “Screw you. I didn’t sleep well.”

John gives him a knowing look. “I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kris demands, waking up a little more as John’s tone registers.

“The way you look right now, plus the way you’ve been looking _all week_?” John raises his eyebrows and grins at Kris. “You’ve totally been getting laid, haven’t you.”

Kris’s eyes widen. “What? No!”

“Oh, yeah? Your homework give you those hickeys from Monday?”

“Oh, crap, my _homework_ ,” blurts Kris, his stomach flipping over with horror.

John starts laughing so hard, the teacher has to tell him twice to shut up.

Which is why Kris spends four hours on Wednesday night catching up on his homework, instead of being out looking for Katy.

—

“Who are you taking to the homecoming dance, Kristopher?” asks Mama, as he’s going up to pretend to go to bed on Thursday night.

“Nobody,” says Kris.

He had been planning to go with Katy, but they weren’t going _together_ , he wasn’t _taking_ her. And anyway, she’s not really around, is she, so. He guesses he’s going by himself.

He’s not sure who else he’d even _ask_.

(His mind flashes, for an insane second, to Adam, who was apparently Kris’s first kiss, that night he doesn’t remember. Who drank Kris’s blood but didn’t have sex with him, who said he’d see what he could do about finding Katy, who _doesn’t kiss humans_ and _lied_ to Kris about it.

Kris has to fight down a slightly hysterical laugh.

As _if_.)

“Nobody, Mama.”

She smiles at him, but it looks a little sad. “Well, I’m sure you’ll have fun, anyway.”

“I guess,” says Kris. He shrugs. “But it’ll probably be really boring.”

She lets him go to his room then, but he just flops down on his bed and stares at his ceiling. He suddenly doesn’t have the energy to go out looking tonight.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” he promises aloud. His dark, empty room stays accusingly silent.

Kris rolls over and buries his face in his pillow, and doesn’t cry. He doesn’t.

Well, nobody can prove he did, anyway.

—

The homecoming dance senior year is just as boring as every other year, it turns out. The decorations are cheesy; the music in the gym is too loud, and crappy to boot; the snacks in the cafeteria are sketchy and Kris wouldn’t eat them if he were getting paid for it.

“Another year, another case of _none of us_ being in the homecoming court,” grumbles John. He’s staring at the little plastic cup of punch sitting on the table in front of him. Kris thinks maybe he’s hoping someone’s going to spike it.

“And after all my hard work campaigning for Cale for Homecoming Queen, too,” says Charles, with a grin across the table at Cale.

“Shut up,” Cale mutters, rolling his eyes, “I know you guys were voting for Andrew.”

“Actually,” says John, “I really voted for Kris.”

“What?” Kris blurts, his face heating. “Come on, I’d have made a terrible Homecoming Queen.”

“But you’d be such a pretty princess!” says Charles, sing-song, while the rest of the table laughs.

Kris makes a face at him. He’s about to retort, when something else catches his attention and he turns in his seat, his voice dying.

“… some sketchy dude lurking in the parking lot! And, Jenna, you will _never_ believe this — Marcy says she thinks he’s waiting for someone!”

The words are hissed, scandalized and gleeful, by one of the cheerleaders at the next table, leaning toward her friend and not being nearly as quiet as she probably wants people to think she means to be. Her wide eyes aren’t on Kris — she probably hasn’t even noticed him paying attention yet — as she says the last part, but he feels like they should be.

“Dude,” says Charles, twisting around to stare at them, too, “what?”

“There’s an older guy in the parking lot with some ridiculous hot car,” says the girl, “he’s dressed in, like, leather and _sunglasses_ —”

“It’s _dark out_ ,” says John, frowning.

“I _know_ ,” says the girl. She inches toward them, now that she’s got an audience other than her friend. “Sketchy, right?”

“What’s he doing?” asks Charles.

“He’s just staring at the school.”

“Like he’s waiting for something,” puts in the girl’s friend.

“Some _one_ ,” the girl corrects. “I’m pretty sure it’s someone.”

“Who at this school would someone like that be waiting for?” asks John, scoffing.

The girl frowns and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Well, we don’t _know_ , do we?”

“We have to wait and see,” says her friend, haughty.

“Oh, yeah, that sounds like a plan,” says Cale. He gives Kris a _can you believe these girls_ look.

John, however, glances toward the doors out of the gym. “Actually…”

“Oh, _yeah_ , definitely. We’re totally doing this,” says Charles, already getting up. “C’mon, let’s go see.”

Cale groans, but he gets up to follow Charles and John outside.

Kris stands, too, along with almost everyone else around them, but. Well.

Unlike them, he’s got a pretty good idea who this sketchy dude in the parking lot is going to turn out to be.

—

As it happens, Adam isn’t actually _in_ the parking lot.

No, he’s just outside it, on the far side of the street, leaning against an illegally parked car, low and sleek — Kris doesn’t know the make or the model but he’s pretty sure it cost more than his parents’ _house_ — and all black and shining. He smiles when he sees Kris, his teeth gleaming in the light from the streetlamp above him.

“Crap,” says Kris.

Charles turns to him, surprised, and he gets even more surprised when Kris starts walking toward Adam. “Kris?”

“Stay here,” Kris says.

“What the hell, Kris,” says Charles, and he’s not the only one who’s noticed Kris moving; probably some people even spotted the way Adam’s arms uncrossed, the way he started smiling, when he saw Kris. Oh, God.

“I know him,” says Kris. “Stay here.”

Charles calls after him, and so do John and Cale, but at least none of them follow.

Kris stops in the middle of the street. “What the heck are you doing here?” he asks.

“You have two choices, Kris Allen,” says Adam.

“Do I,” says Kris.

“You can stand over there like you’re terrified of me — which, of course, you should be — and let all those interested eyes behind you think I’m stalking you,” says Adam, “and then you’ll get to explain what you were doing with me, when they’re all concerned and suspicious. And maybe, if you’re lucky, _maybe_ they’ll let the subject drop before… _drastic action_ is required.”

Kris swallows. He doesn’t want to think about what ‘drastic action’ could mean to a freakin’ _vampire_ , not in the context of his friends, his school, his _life_. “You said I had two?”

“I did.”

“What’s the second one?”

Adam’s smile widens. “You can come over here,” he says, pushing his sunglasses up his forehead to rest in his ridiculous hair, “and I’ll give them something _else_ to think.”

It only takes Kris a second to make up his mind.

Adam grabs him the instant he’s close enough, no hesitation, just puts a hand on his arm and tugs him in, and— Kris goes. He doesn’t resist at all, just _goes_ , lets himself be pulled close, then spun around and pressed against the side of the car. Adam’s other hand comes up, cradles the back of Kris’s neck, and then he’s leaning down, nuzzling his face up under Kris’s jaw, breath on his skin, and. And this time there are lips touching him, too, unmistakable kisses, and, _oh_ , that mouth, with those teeth, and those freaking amazing _lips_ , touching him, God, it’s familiar like déjà vu, scary like the part of a horror movie where the music picks up right before the monsters come out of the dark.

Kris’s heart is pounding and his knees feel weak, but he doesn’t try to move away, doesn’t fight Adam, not even a little, not even just for show, instead relaxing into the feeling of Adam’s hands heavy and sure on him.

It feels… it feels _good_.

“Wh–what are you doing here?” says Kris, shaky. He tips his head back, and feels Adam smile against his bared throat.

“Don’t you want to know how it’s going with the search for your missing person?”

“There’s a _search_?” asks Kris.

Adam rubs his mouth over the tendon of Kris’s neck. It’s really… distracting. “I said I’d see what I could do. Looking, I can do.”

“So you’re here, that means. That means— did you find her?”

“We found something.”

“What?”

“A group of my kind just outside of town were seen with a human girl several nights ago, leading her into the basement of their restaurant, and then nothing.”

Kris’s heart trips. His throat feels like it’s trying to clog.

“Are you sure it’s her?”

“I have no idea if it’s her,” says Adam. He shrugs, miniscule movement of his shoulders under Kris’s hands. “But my people say they definitely had a human, of the tiny female variety, that went into their basement and hasn’t appeared again. Not even as a body.”

“Oh.” Kris swallows thickly. “Do you think she’s…?”

“They haven’t seen them move a body,” Adam says again, firmly. He grazes his lips over one of the tendons in Kris’s neck.

It takes Kris a second to focus on anything else.

“But would they do that? Keep her alive?”

“They might,” says Adam.

“Why?”

Adam pulls back, gazes down at him coolly. “A number of reasons,” he says.

Kris watches Adam’s face for a moment, and in the end, decides he doesn’t want to ask. “Okay,” he says instead. “So. So can you, uhm. Get her back?”

“Oh, easily,” says Adam. He grins. Everything about him looks dangerous, for a second.

Something in Kris’s stomach flips, hot and desperate. He tilts his hips back, angling them away from Adam, presses himself back against the side of Adam’s car, blushing and hoping Adam hasn’t noticed how that tone and that _look_ just got Kris kinda all the way hard. He’s been most of the way there since he got pressed up against the car; Adam up close to him like this, and all _sure_ of himself, is… is confusing. It isn’t like Kris is doing it on _purpose_ , or anything. He can’t help it.

Adam’s smile gets a tiny bit wider and his expression sharpens a little. “Ah,” he says, and leans back in, puts his mouth back on Kris’s neck— higher up, closer to his jaw. Right over his pounding pulse.

His knee slips between Kris’s legs, pushes up and in, until his thigh is pressed to Kris’s erection. Kris’s hips jerk, involuntary, riding against that pressure right where he didn’t know he wants it.

Oh, _fuck_.

“Not here,” he thinks he hears Adam say, but then he feels teeth break skin and everything else gets lost in a big, writhing, confused mess of pain and adrenaline and pain and surprise and _oh, God, that feels good_.

“Adam,” he gasps. “What are you— You can’t— People can see—”

Adam doesn’t reply. Not with words, anyway; there’s a long, slow sucking _pull_ at Kris’s neck that has his head spinning, and Adam moves the hand from Kris’s arm to his side, almost petting.

Kris whimpers, can’t seem to stop himself from pressing up toward Adam. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t _try_. “Please,” he says, and isn’t sure what he’s asking for.

After a moment, Adam lets up, sucking lightly at the skin of Kris’s neck instead of drawing out blood, and Kris’s hips are humping up again without his input. Adam’s tongue swipes over the punctures; Kris swears he can _feel_ them closing up and scabbing over.

Still, it’s another few moments before Adam pulls back.

He keeps his hands on Kris, keeping him still — everything but his hips, which he can’t seem to stop moving, because, oh, god, Adam feels so _good_ rubbing against Kris’s dick through their clothes. There’s an almost viciously satisfied look on Adam’s face as he looks down at Kris, and _lets_ him move.

“Seriously. You couldn’t just have called me?” Kris tries to joke, his voice weak. His neck throbs dully.

One of Adam’s eyebrows lifts, just a tiny bit. He licks his lips — Kris shudders, wonders if Adam can still taste him — and after a second, says, slowly, “I don’t have your number.”

It’s not _quite_ a request, but the way he looks at Kris when he says it… Kris forces his hips still, it isn’t easy but he does it, makes himself stop thrusting against Adam even though he’s right _there_ and watching and so _solid_ and _hot_ and— but Kris does, he goes still, and manages to say,

“Uh. I could give it to you?”

“Do that,” says Adam.

“Do you have a pen?” Kris asks, reaching for Adam’s hand to write it down, to make sure he can’t lose it later. It’s not that Kris thinks Adam’s _going_ to, not since he’s bothering to get it in the first place (getting it only to lose it seems like the sort of nonsense time-wasting that vampire mob bosses or whatever just wouldn’t be down with), and it’s not like Kris goes around writing on people’s skin or anything, usually, but— It’s a Katy-thing, something he’s seen her do a million times, just take a guy’s hand and write her number on it, and for some reason it feel completely normal for him to do it now.

Except Adam catches Kris’s hand with his own, twists their fingers together so Kris can’t get a good grip. The corner of his mouth twitches.

“Just tell me,” says Adam. “I’ll remember.”

So Kris tells him.

“Okay. Now I have your number. Next time, I’ll call you.”

“Next time?”

Adam hums something in his throat, and leans down, licking one last time over Kris’s neck — which, despite all his better intentions, makes Kris jerk against him, makes his him rub his still hard cock one last time on Adam’s leg — before actually, finally, letting Kris go. He steps back.

It takes Kris a few seconds to stop sagging against the car and stand under his own power. But eventually, he manages.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” says Adam, as Kris steps around him, so he can get to his car door and actually, like, _open it_.

“Okay,” says Kris, still a little dazed. Then, “Wait, what?”

“Tomorrow night. My people are going after the coven holding this human. We’ll see if she’s your Katy. Come to the club, Kris.”

He’s in his car, the engine turning over with a low, shiver-inducing rumble, before Kris can come up with any words to respond to _that_.

At least Kris no longer needs to go to Kaleidoscope tonight. Or any of the other clubs on Katy’s list, for that matter.

—

“What the _fuck_.”

Charles is staring at Kris, when he finally gets done staring after Adam’s car (or, y’know, _willing down his erection_ , crap on a cracker, this was not what he signed up for when he went looking for Katy) and crosses back to the school, to the little mob of people outside the doors. 

Specifically, Charles is staring at the side of his neck. At the place where Adam— Right.

Kris isn’t gonna think about that right now. He’ll just… focus on his friends. Who are staring at him.

The other students are _all_ staring at him, actually, and there’re more than there were before Kris went over to Adam. There are even a few of the chaperones outside, too, standing back behind the teenagers, faces stern where the kids’ are excited and curious.

Kris didn’t even notice the crowd over here getting bigger. He didn’t notice anything, besides what Adam was doing. He flushes.

“I said I knew him,” he mutters, to nobody in particular.

Cale makes with the wide eyes some more. John just gapes.

“Knew him,” Charles repeats. He shakes his head, then fists his hand in Kris’s buttondown-shirt and tries to pull Kris away from everyone else.

For a second, Kris resists. When he notices one of the chaperones — dang it, that’s Mrs Murphy, she’s in his mom’s book club — frowning at them, he gives in and follows Charles back into the building.

“Okay,” says Charles, once he’s jimmied his way into a biology classroom and closed the door behind them. “So tell me how you _know him_.”

Kris looks away. “I met him at that club on the outskirts of town, down near the city. You know the one, out by the interstate?”

Charles’s eyes widen. “Kaleidoscope?”

Kris licks his lips. He nods.

“The hell were you doing in _Kaleidoscope_?” demands Charles, his voice rising. “Other than letting yourself get picked up by creepy older men, and I’m coming back to that in a minute, don’t think I’m not.”

“I was looking for Katy,” admits Kris.

Charles groans. “Jesus, Kris.”

Kris presses his lips together and doesn’t meet Charles’s eyes.

“You need to give that a rest, man. Katy probably just went to LA to become a movie star, like she was always saying she’d do.”

Kris flushes angrily. “She wouldn’t just leave without telling anyone,” he says.

“Kris—”

“Not without telling _me_ ,” says Kris.

“Even the police think that’s what happened!”

“The police,” Kris says, feeling something cold go down his spine as he realizes, crap, he’s telling the _truth_ , in more ways than just the one Charles is going to think he means, “don’t know what I do.”

Kris isn’t really sure what his face is doing, but Charles is gaping at it, and he looks baffled in a way Kris doesn’t like.

“Look,” Kris says, turning away. “I’m done talking about this. Let’s go back to the dance.”

“Kris,” says Charles.

He freezes, the door handle cold under his fingers. “What,” he says, without turning.

“The creepy older men?”

“Adam isn’t creepy,” Kris lies.

“He’s _an older man_ ,” says Charles. “How is that not creepy? You’re a _teenager_!”

A hand closes around Kris’s upper arm, but he jerks away from it before Charles can pull him around. Charles huffs, annoyed, but doesn’t grab him again, just says, “You picked him up in a nightclub, Kris.”

“Not really,” says Kris, because, well. He didn’t. (God, if _only_ it had happened like that.)

“He picked you up, then,” says Charles. There’s a pause, then he adds, more quietly, “Is he the reason you’ve been so weird lately?”

Kris hesitates.

“Kris? Is he?”

“Yes,” admits Kris.

Charles exhales, hard, at the confirmation.

Kris gets the door open and leaves, before he can spill anything else.

—

“Sketchy dude’s name is Adam,” Charles says, when they reach their table again, where their friends are apparently waiting for them. Probably the chaperones shooed everyone back inside after Kris wasn’t out there to gape at anymore.

Kris jerks, his face flushing, and stares at Charles. “Dude. Why would you just—”

Charles isn’t looking at him, eyes locked with John instead. “Kris is letting him bone him.”

“Oh, my God,” says Kris, completely mortified. He considers ducking under the table and never speaking to any of his friends ever again.

They ignore him.

“I’m pretty sure we all figured _that_ out,” John says to Charles. He gestures toward Kris’s neck, toward the hickey Kris has been trying to pretend isn’t marking the place Adam _drank_ from him— in _public_ , oh, God. “The clue bus had sirens on when it ran us over.”

“No wonder Kris didn’t want to ask anybody to the dance,” says Cale, shaking his head.

“Guys,” Kris groans.

“Seriously. I can see it,” John says, squinting at Kris but still talking to everyone else. He nods. “This so explains why he was always insisting he and Katy weren’t together.”

“We _weren’t_ ,” says Kris.

“Well, obviously, we can see that _now_ ,” says Cale.

“Because you’re into dudes,” adds John.

“As evidenced by your sketchy older boyfriend,” says Charles.

“Adam isn’t my boyfriend!”

“You are, like, the world’s _worst_ liar,” John tells him, shaking his head pityingly. “You didn’t use that same tone when you told him you were eighteen, did you?”

Kris’s face— it freezes. He can _feel_ it go still and blank, but he can’t seem to stop it.

For a second, they just stare at him.

“… please say you told him you were eighteen,” says Charles. He looks like Kris’s existence _hurts_ him. “Tell me he believed you.”

Kris licks his lips. He looks at the tablecloth.

Cale makes a horrified noise. “Jesus, he _knows_ you’re a minor?”

“Your boyfriend’s a pervert,” says John.

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Kris tries, again.

“Sure he isn’t.” Charles puts his head in his hands. “Shit, you’ll probably visit him in jail, too, won’t you?”

“He’s not going to jail! Nobody’s going to jail. Because he isn’t my boyfriend and there’s no se— no reason for jail!”

“This is just sad,” says John. He shakes his head again; this time he looks a little awed, as well as pitying. “Your life, Kris. It’s _sad_.”

Kris drops his head to the table and groans.

The side of his neck throbs, a low, steady ache.

It _isn’t_ soothing. That would be… wrong. Or something. Maybe.

—

“Irene called me this morning,” says Mama, the next day. She’s giving Kris the knowing, level look that she uses on him and Daniel when she knows they’ve done something wrong and is just waiting for them to admit it so she can get on with projecting disappointment at them.

“Mrs Murphy?” says Kris, sure he doesn’t sound nearly as casual as he wishes he did. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine. She had some interesting things to say about your school dance last night.”

Kris’s shoulders go tense. He can’t stop it, anymore than he could stop his face telling his friends all kinds of crap, is sure she notices. Probably she’s reading the wrong things into it — he hopes like _heck_ she’s reading the wrong things into it. He doesn’t know how she’d manage to read the right things into it, though, come to think of it; ‘vampire’ usually isn’t anybody’s first thought when they hear that a grown, vaguely menacing man showed up at their kid’s high school dance and molested him in the parking lot. Or at least, Kris doesn’t _think_ it is.

“Did she?” he makes himself ask.

Mama puts down her coffee cup a little harder than necessary. She crosses her arms. “Kristopher.”

“What?”

“Who is he,” says Mama.

Kris thinks about playing dumb — really dumb — and asking _who’s who_? That’s probably not the way to avoid getting grounded, though. And he really doesn’t want to be grounded.

“He’s just somebody I know,” he tries.

“She said he kissed you,” says Mama.

… Yeah, no, kissing wasn’t really what had gone down. But Kris can’t very well say _no, he was just drinking my blood, because he’s a vampire_ , anymore than he could pretend not to know what she’s talking about.

“So?” he says, instead. “Lotsa people kiss… people.”

Mama, well, she takes that not-a-denial better than Kris thinks she could’ve — she doesn’t start talking about older men and _bad touching_ , or start crying, or start yelling at him about, like, sin and filthy homosexuals and disgrace. (Not that the latter was very _likely_ , but, hey, Kris knows that some people pull off the whole ‘tolerant’ thing, right up until it was their own family they were talking about, and even then Susie from down the street had only been caught holding hands with her girlfriend, and Mama thinks they’re talking about Kris _kissing_ a boy, so, yeah; legitimate concern, okay.) She just looks _displeased_. “Kristopher.”

“What, Mama?” asks Kris, with a tiny groan.

“Is this… this man your _boyfriend_?”

“No!”

Mama’s mouth gets all flat and disapproving. Crap.

Eventually, Kris will be able to say that and people will _believe_ him.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “And don’t you lie to me this time.”

Well. Double crap.

It’s not like telling the truth is really an option, here.

Kris settles for, “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Are you sure?” Mama presses, because she’s his mama and she worries and Kris is probably not doing a very good of convincing her not to. “You can talk to me, Kristopher, I want to help you. Is something wrong?”

Yes. Definitely yes.

At the same time, Kris is pretty sure it _isn’t_ , not the way she thinks; she’s thinking of Adam, but she doesn’t need to be, because Adam. Well. Adam isn’t one of the things going _wrong_ with Kris’s life. Not… really. Not anymore. Kris is pretty sure, anyway.

“No.”

She frowns more. “Are you in trouble?”

Yes. Probably a whole lot of it.

“No,” he says. “And I _don’t want to talk about it_. Jeeze, Mama.”

He stares down at his bowl of cereal, rather than look at her and her concern and her judgement and just— He doesn’t want to see any of that right now, okay.

“This isn’t like you, Kristopher,” Mama says, after a few minutes of quiet.

Kris resists the urge to agree, because she’s right, it isn’t like him— not the him he used to be, before he walked through the doors of Kaleidoscope and into Adam’s world, found himself on his knees with unreal blue eyes looking down at him approvingly, the only thing he could remember the next morning.

But what he ends up saying is, “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” in a quiet voice that miraculously doesn’t shake. He risks a glance up at her, just a quick one.

It’s long enough to see Mama’s face crumple.

Kris feels bad, he does, but what he’s saying is the truth, isn’t it? He’s not who he was even two weeks ago.

He really isn’t.

He should probably mind more than he does.

—

On Saturday night, Kris leaves the house as soon as he’s reasonably sure his parents have gone to bed and won’t be checking on him later in the night. He can hear that Daniel’s still awake down the hall, can hear the clicking of his computer keyboard, but the only thing less likely than Daniel deciding to look in on Kris during the night is Daniel seeing that Kris is gone and correctly guessing _where_ Kris has gone. Besides, Kris is pretty sure Daniel’s got a girlfriend or something he’s been hiding.

Kris totally doesn’t need to worry about Daniel ratting him out.

He bikes out to Kaleidoscope, a lot less nervous than the last time he did it. Maybe a _little_ less nervous. Not _afraid_ , anyway.

Well, okay, he’s at least pretty sure he’s not going to get molested by any _strangers_ this time.

These butterflies in his gut are just because, if he’s lucky, in a few hours he might have Katy back.

—

The bouncer pulls Kris out of the line as soon as he sees him, again. This time, though, he doesn’t look nearly as intimidating, even though he’s just as big as before.

“You’re expected,” is all he says, as he ushers Kris inside. He’s not smiling, or anything, but _something_ about him just seems less unfriendly.

Kris chances a smile. “Uh, thanks. Do you know where—”

“Tommy and Brad should be waiting for you,” says the bouncer, and then he’s paying attention to the line again and Kris has pretty clearly been dismissed.

“Right,” says Kris, after staring for a second. He goes in.

He didn’t expect ‘waiting for you’ to mean ‘they’re right inside the door’, but that’s apparently what it _did_ mean, because that’s where Kris finds Tommy and Brad.

Right inside the door.

Waiting for him.

“There you are, we thought you’d be here earl—” Brad starts, then apparently gets a good look at Kris and draws to a full, sudden stop, and stares. Kris stares back, telling himself he’s not freaked out.

“… wait, he already drank from you again?” says Tommy, looking at the side of Kris’s neck. He pauses, then says, surprise heavy in his voice, “ _Already_?”

“Uhm,” says Kris, nodding warily. “When he came to the school?”

“But. No, but that was hours and hours ago, he didn’t— then why is he—”

“Shut up,” hisses Brad, elbowing Tommy sharply in the side. His eyes look a little wide, too. “Jesus, Ratliff, _shut the fuck up_.”

Kris frowns. “What,” he asks, “what is it, what’s that mean?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” Brad says, quickly.

He and Tommy are both still staring at Kris’s neck.

Uncomfortable, feeling like he’s protecting something even though he’s not quite sure what or why — maybe he should have but Kris hasn’t ever been afraid that either of _them_ would bite him, doesn’t worry about _their_ fangs on his skin — he lifts a hand to his neck, trying to cover… whatever it is that’s making them stare like that. His fingers brush the place where Adam bit him, twice now, and he has to fight down a shudder.

Brad and Tommy keep staring.

“Oh, _man_ ,” Tommy breathes.

“ _What_ ,” says Kris, frowning.

“Just, you—”

“Kris.”

Adam’s voice stops whatever Tommy was going to say, cutting through his words like the crack of a whip, or something else dramatic and loud and sharp.

Then Adam is there beside Kris, staring at Brad and Tommy sort of really… intensely.

“… Right,” says Brad, after a second, and then he and Tommy are just turning and leaving.

“Well,” says Kris, watching them go and hoping he doesn’t look nearly as confused as he feels. “That was… weird.”

“Ignore them,” Adam suggests. In, y’know, the voice dog-trainers use to _suggest_ their pupils do things like _sit_ and _stay_ and _play dead_.

“What was it about?”

“Nothing,” says Adam. It might as well be _roll over_.

Kris eyes him suspiciously. “Seriously?”

“Nothing for you to worry about right now,” Adam amends. He frowns heavily and looks Kris over. “What are you _wearing_?”

Kris tugs self-consciously at the hem of the black hoodie he’s got on over his black t-shirt. So the hoodie maybe doesn’t fit him very well, he accidentally stole it from Katy ages ago, but whatever, it doesn’t look _that_ bad. Right? And it totally matches his black jeans.

“Clothes?”

Adam makes a disapproving noise. “You look like you think you’re going cat-burgling.”

“I do not,” Kris mutters.

Adam looks unconvinced.

“Well, we’re going after Kat— to that place where they’ve got that human,” says Kris. He crosses his arms over his chest, but that doesn’t mean he’s being defensive, because. Because he’s not. “This seemed appropriate.”

“You think you’re coming with us?”

Kris makes his fidgeting hands go still. “Yeah.” After a pause, during which Adam keeps looking at him flatly, he adds, “Aren’t I?”

It feels like a very long time before Adam says anything.

“Stay close to me,” is what finally comes out, in a hard voice that Kris— really doesn’t have any intention of arguing with.

“Yeah, no, I can do that,” he promises, quickly, afraid if he waits too long to agree Adam’s going to change his mind, and then he’ll be left behind. He really doesn’t want to be left behind. “I can definitely do that. I will.”

Adam gives a sharp nod. Putting a hand on Kris’s back, between his shoulder blades, he starts off in the same direction Brad and Tommy went, pulling Kris with him.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re leaving.”

—

Adam takes Kris out the side door and around to the back of the building, where a wide metal door has been rolled up to reveal a garage. There’s only one car in it, the sports car Adam brought to the school.

Adam’s hand drops from Kris’s back. “Get in,” he says, already walking to the driver’s side door.

“Is that… street legal?” Kris can’t resist asking, because really, on closer inspection, does it _look_ street legal? No. No, it does not.

“Get _in_.”

Street legal or not, he gets in.

“Seat belt,” says Adam, the engine turning over with a deep rumble.

Kris is already fastening it. “You’re not wearing one,” he points out, though, looking over at Adam.

“No, I’m not.”

The tires don’t squeal as Adam peals out of the garage, down the alley, and onto the street, which kind of surprises Kris. Several people in the line waiting to get into the club wolf-whistle as they pass.

Even though he _knows_ they can’t see him, Kris blushes. “Why does it matter if I wear one if you’re not?” he asks.

Adam doesn’t even look over. “I don’t want to spend a week getting your blood off my dashboard if I crash.”

On the door handle, where he’d been ignoring he put them, Kris’s hands grip a little more tightly. His voice goes up an octave. “Is that _likely_? You crashing? Because I didn’t agree to any crashing.”

At a conveniently red light, Adam glances at Kris, just when Kris was starting to be glad that Adam is apparently an attentive driver. “Is this because I said you look like a cat burglar?”

“What?” Kris looks at him blankly. “Is _what_ because I look like a cat burglar?”

Adam just keeps giving him a look Kris can’t really read.

“Never mind,” Adam says. The light turns green. This time, when he accelerates, the tires _do_ squeal.

Kris doesn’t try talking again, and they ride in silence until they pull to a stop at the mouth of a back street, where Kris can see Tommy and Brad and several other people waiting. He assumes that it leads to a back entrance to the restaurant that is their destination, which isn’t exactly disproved when Adam parks and shuts off the engine.

Before they get out of the car, Adam turns to Kris, a flat, serious expression on his face. “You remember what I said.”

It isn’t a question.

Kris nods. “Stick with you, right?”

“Stay _close_ ,” says Adam, nodding. “And I mean that.”

“I will,” says Kris. “Promise.”

Going into a den of vampires all by himself doesn’t sound like fun, anyway. Especially not unprotected; Kris’d just as soon stick with Adam, even if Adam didn’t tell him to.

“See that you do.”

Adam gets out, and Kris follows him.

He only grins a _little_ bit smugly at the surprised looks on Tommy and Brad’s faces when they see him.

—

Kris isn’t really sure what he was expecting, but the vampires breaking into the kitchen of this restaurant and knocking out the few employees that are there, no fuss, no muss, and no time for their victims to react? Was not exactly it.

Brad pushes a kitchen aide’s torso off the counter — where he’s slumped because Brad _hit him in the back of the head with a skillet_ from the station behind him — then tosses the skillet back onto the counter. He looks as calm as if he does this sort of thing every day.

Kris doesn’t really want to think about if Brad actually _does_.

“Secure the front,” says Adam. He doesn’t move from where he’d stopped a few feet into room; he’s got one shoulder angled back, keeping Kris boxed behind him.

Tommy nods. “Right, Boss,” he says, already going through the doors leading to the dining area.

“Brooke and I can take the manager’s offices,” Brad pipes up, rubbing his hands together over the body, like he’s brushing dirt off them. His gaze cuts past Adam, meets Kris’s. He gives smile that shows all his teeth, and says, “Go ahead and take your boy down to get his girlfriend.”

Judging by the sound Adam makes, his response to that is a snarl, but Kris can’t see his face to make sure.

“Do that,” orders Adam, and, “The rest of you, to the basement.”

Still smiling in that way that’s thoroughly creeping Kris out, Brad flicks a little salute toward Adam and heads for a nearby door, the woman in what looks like a leather corset following him.

Kris would pay attention to where the rest of the vampires go, but Adam’s half-turning, curling his hand around Kris’s wrist, and drawing him even closer — which is impressive, considering Kris was already standing close enough that he could’ve buried his face in that broad, curved spot between Adam’s shoulder blades, just by leaning forward a little.

“Sure you want to come for this?”

“I’m sure,” Kris lies.

Adam gives a sharp nod, and pulls Kris to an open door and down the flight of stairs behind it. He only lets go of Kris’s wrist when his feet hit the floor.

There are more people in the basement than there were in the kitchen, which means that by the time Kris gets there, there are more bodies littering the room. It’s much less neat than upstairs in the kitchen. Some of these are bleeding. One of them still has her eyes open. She isn’t moving.

Kris looks away from that body quickly.

“Is that everyone?” Adam asks, stepping over the slender body of a boy in silver lamé shorts, which looks thoroughly out of place if you ask Kris. Which nobody is.

“Might be a few more down there,” answers one of Adam’s vampires, tossing her head to indicate a corridor off to the side, her long hair swinging. “A couple of rooms we haven’t checked yet, Boss.”

“I’ll check those myself. Secure these,” the toe of one black leather boot prods the silver lamé boy’s side, “upstairs. I’ll deal with them later.”

“Boss,” she acknowledges, nodding.

Adam turns and heads for the corridor she indicated.

Kris follows.

At first there’s nothing very interesting, just rooms decorated in a way Kris wouldn’t have expected of a restaurant’s basement, all shiny couches and televisions and edgy modern art on the walls. In one of the rooms, with piles of cushions instead of furniture and dim red lights, there’s a familiar-smelling smokey haze in the air — but Kris doesn’t really get a good look in there, because he barely has time to take one breath before Adam’s shoving him bodily back out of the room, and he’s got the door closed again before the stars clear from the edges of Kris’s vision.

“What—” Kris starts, blinking hard. If Adam notices, he doesn’t show it, instead heading for the very last unchecked room.

This one, unlike the others, has a locked door.

Adam breaks it open with a single kick next to the handle.

“… whoa,” blurts Kris, wide-eyed.

One foot already across the threshold, Adam pauses, looking over his shoulder at Kris. He raises an eyebrow. “What? Did _you_ have the key?”

Kris can only shake his head.

“Exactly,” says Adam, and he moves forward again.

“Okay then,” says Kris, and follows.

The room is small, and poorly lit, and _empty_ , except for a figure in the far corner, curled in a ball on the floor, its back to them. As they approach, it lets out a moan, high and plaintive. Kris’s skin crawls.

“Hello?” Adam calls, in a careful, low voice that Kris hasn’t heard before. He takes a half step sideways, almost blocking Kris’s view.

The figure shifts, moaning again, and rolls over, revealing that, yes, it’s a girl. She looks _dreadful_ , but she’s definitely a girl.

Kris stares at her, his heart sinking.

“Kris?”

“It isn’t Katy,” says Kris. He has to force the words out; his throat feels too tight for them. He _knew_ it was too good to be true, should never have trusted that it could be this easy. “Adam, it isn’t her.”

“It isn’t?”

A moment later, Adam is kneeling beside the girl, his expression sharp. As Kris watches, his nostrils flare, and he narrows his eyes. One of his hands lifts toward the girl’s head.

“Adam?” says Kris. His voice comes out unsteady. “What are you—”

Adam brushes the hair away from her face, taking in the unfocused, too bright-eyes, the pallor of her skin, and says, “No wonder they were keeping her down here.”

“Adam,” Kris says again, a little relieved that it doesn’t look like he’s going to have to watch Adam kill someone just for not being Katy, and surprised at how gentle Adam’s touch seems, “I don’t— what are you talking about? Do you know who she is?”

“I have no idea who she is.” With the same care as he brushed her hair back, Adam slides his arms under the girl’s shoulders and knees. He stands, lifting her like she weighs nothing.

“Then why…?”

“But I know _what_ she is,” Adam adds.

Kris bites his lip. He doesn’t ask.

“She’s a vampire,” Adam says, after a moment, confirming what Kris was afraid of. “Too weak to be anything but newly Turned; I’d bet she’s never even fed.”

“What are you going to do?” asks Kris, following Adam as he makes his way to the stairs and out of the basement.

Adam pauses, glancing over his shoulder at Kris. One of his eyebrows is raised. He doesn’t look amused. “Help her,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and walks away.

Kris doesn’t follow. He swallows, his hands shaking, and tries to pretend his heart’s not racing and that he’s absolutely not feeling something like want twisting through his gut.

So what if Adam’s capable of gentleness? It shouldn’t matter to Kris.

—

Adam doesn’t come back for Kris. Not that Kris really expected him to, but. Still. He doesn’t come back, and something in Kris sinks a little with disappointment.

Instead, Tommy finds him, after a few minutes, and makes what is probably _trying_ to be a sympathetic face.

“What,” asks Kris, looking down at his shoes.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t your girlfriend,” says Tommy.

Katy isn’t his girlfriend, but Kris is sort of starting to not see the point about correcting people, not when _he_ knows the truth, and that’s totally enough, so all he says is, “Really?”

“Actually, yeah,” and he even sounds sincere about it and everything. When Kris looks up at him, surprised, Tommy shrugs. “What? I can’t be sorry about something?”

“I really have no idea,” Kris says. “Can you?”

“Now you’re just being mean,” says Tommy, shaking his head with a little smirk, even though, no, actually, Kris wasn’t. He honestly _doesn’t know_.

What’s the emotional depth of a _vampire_ , really? Where’s the moral code, the right-feeling in something who can blithely (eagerly, even) and knowingly drag a teenage boy off to be stripped naked, spread out, and _consumed_ , all for the sake of pleasing the creature— the person? — who was going to do the stripping, spreading, and consuming?

Kris seriously just has no idea whatsoever.

Watching his face, Tommy sighs and puts a hand to the back of his shoulder. It’s careful, absurdly so, almost respectful; a far cry from Kris’s blurry memories of being dragged like a lamb to the slaughter through Adam’s club.

“Come on, Kris Allen,” Tommy says quietly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Kris deflates. “Okay.”

Tommy sees Kris home, drives him most of the way there, and then, though Kris doesn’t see him after he leaves the car so he can’t prove it, follows Kris on foot the last five minutes to his house.

Kris should maybe be completely surprised that at no point does he have to give Tommy directions, but he isn’t.

Maybe the question of how Kris got home that first night just got answered.

As Kris shrugs out of his clothes and into his pajamas, as he brushes his teeth (very, very quietly), as he crawls into bed… he can’t help thinking.

What _now_?

—

Kris gets up early and showers, even though he showered yesterday afternoon, because otherwise he’ll be going to church smelling like a bar and that’s probably not a good way to avoid making his family suspicious. He’s bleary and spacey all through the service, and falls asleep in the backseat on the way home.

Mama, when she wakes him up to go inside, is looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“You look tired,” says Dad, and he’s smiling but he doesn’t actually sound anything close to amused.

“Yeah, I— I guess I am,” says Kris, shrugging, and doing his best to not look like someone who’d been out until three in the morning helping break up a coven of vampires. “Didn’t sleep well, or something.”

“Or something,” repeats Mama, her lips pursing.

Kris looks away. “So. I’m gonna go take a nap, then. Before I go over to John’s.”

Mama makes a neutral, humming sort of noise. Dad doesn’t say anything.

Kris goes upstairs to escape their eyes.

He’s not expecting to fall asleep, especially not quickly, but he does anyway.

—

Kris wakes up fifteen minutes after he was supposed to meet Cale at Starbucks before they head over to John’s, to his phone angrily telling him he’s got three texts and a missed call. It takes him a minute for the sensation of phantom hands stroking his face and gently lifting him into strong arms, to go away enough for him to pick his phone up and make it shut up.

 _sry, fell sleep_ , he tells Cale, still squinting through the sleep in his eyes. _be there in 10_

 _got ur coffee already_ he gets back, almost immediately, and Kris grins as he shoves his feet back into his sneakers and bolts for the stairs so he can say goodbye to his parents.

“You look exhausted,” says Cale, when Kris jogs to a panting stop outside the Starbucks. He holds out Kris’s standard order of _that boring girly vanilla shit_ and waggles it invitingly. “C’mon, wake up, we’ve got Megan Fox to marathon.”

A few deep breaths, and Kris gets his arm up to take the latte. Mostly so Cale will stop waving it in his face like that. “You know, those movies also have giant alien robots and explosions,” he points out. There’s a stitch in his side and he’d really like it to go away now. He’d thought he was better at the running thing. “Which I thought was the point?”

Cale makes a thoughtful noise. “There’s Shia Labeouf, too, I guess.”

“Yeah,” says Kris, “ _no_.”

“Josh Duhamel?”

Kris rolls his eyes. “Shut up and drive. We’re already late.”

“Whose fault is that, Rihanna?” Cale says, grinning, and digs out his keys.

—

To be fair, Kris honestly does his best, he really does, to pay attention to the Decepticons arriving on Earth and the main character’s car being twice as adorable as the main character himself is, but, well.

He maybe wasn’t as subtle about checking his phone as he would have liked.

“Dude, just admit it, your mind’s totally not even here, is it,” says Charles, in the middle of the third movie. He’s giving Kris a knowing look, and next to him, Cale is smirking.

Kris opens his mouth — then promptly closes it again before anything can come out, because if he says what he wants to, the guys are just going to think he wants to leave because he’d rather be with Adam right now. Which is true, but they’re going to think it’s because he’d rather be, like, off having sex with Adam, not going out and rescuing girls-who-turned-out-not-to-be-Katy with Adam. And Kris doesn’t want them thinking that.

Because he’s totally not having sex with Adam.

“Jeeze,” John says, with a groan. “Your face right now is telling me, like, way more about your personal life than I have _ever_ wanted to know, man.”

“If you’re supposed to be meeting the creepy older boyfriend, just go, okay,” adds Charles.

“I don’t— What are you talking about?” blurts Kris. He’s blushing, he knows he is.

Charles shakes his head. “No, don’t even, you’re so not subtle.”

“Go on, man,” says Cale.

“I’m not gonna— Are you sure?”

Charles pulls a face, and chucks a cushion at him. Kris is pretty sure that’s not why they’re called ‘throw pillows’. “Really, we’re sure. Get lost.”

“Hey! That isn’t—”

“Just text your parents you’re staying the night,” interrupts John. “Come back when you’ve got all the pervy gay sexual thoughts or whatever out of your system.”

“I—” starts Kris.

“ _Go_!”

Well. Kris isn’t gonna keep arguing, not in the face of _that_.

“Okay. But I… need a ride.”

—

Charles drives him, because Charles is helpful like that (and also John asked him to go get more Mountain Dew), and leaves Kris at the mouth of Kaleidoscope’s street, with a snarky comment that Kris chooses not to hear.

It’s early, so the line out front is still really long. This time, just as an experiment, Kris goes straight to the bouncer — who steps aside before Kris has even properly reached him, letting Kris in without a word.

If Kris were to say it doesn’t give him a little bit of a thrill, he’d be lying. Through his _teeth_.

Nobody’s waiting for him just inside the door, most likely because nobody is expecting him. Kris hesitates, for a minute, by the edge of the dance floor. He… hadn’t really thought beyond getting here, and getting in. He’s pretty sure the guy guarding the door with the glittery A on it that leads to the back rooms would let him through, and then probably anybody he asked could point him to Adam, but the guy is intimidating and the idea of wandering Adam’s back rooms is more so. The dance floor, uncrowded as it is this early, is somehow even _worse_.

In the end, Kris heads for the bar.

He’s not here for the dancing. He’s not here for the drinks, either, but he’ll take them over the dancing.

The bartender isn’t the girl who has served Kris before. Instead, there’s some shirtless skinny guy down at the other end of the bar, who takes one look at Kris and looks away— then whips his head back around and takes a second look. His eyes get kinda big. Kris can tell all the way from his end of the bar.

Then suddenly the guy isn’t at the other end of the bar, he’s down at Kris’s. Right across from him, actually.

“Oh my god,” says the guy, leaning most of the way over the counter. His eyes aren’t huge anymore. They’re actually kind of narrowed. “ _Look_ at you. Wow. Damn, boy.”

“Uh,” says Kris. “Hi?”

The guy rocks back down to his heels, looking surprised. It takes him back to his side of the counter, so Kris is pretty pleased about it. “It’s totally true, isn’t? All of it. Wow,” says the guy.

“Uh,” says Kris.

The guy _grins_ at him, and Kris doesn’t see even the hint of fangs even though he’s ninety percent sure this guy is a vampire. He turns his head, without taking his eyes off Kris, and calls, “Boss! _He’s_ here!”

He barely raises his voice. Then,

“You want a coke?” he asks Kris. He’s still grinning. “Seltzer water. Virgin daiquiri?

“Uh,” says Kris. He’s probably the one with the big eyes now.

The guy _laughs_. “Right. Coming right up, on the house. Sit tight.”

“…Okay?” says Kris, but the guy has already shimmied off down the bar somewhere, and Kris just ends up blinking at where the guy was standing.

A minute later he’s back, pushing something brightly colored and sweet-looking across the bar at Kris and saying, “The Boss is coming out for you, don’t go anywhere, okay?”

“Thank you?” Kris manages. The drink is somehow in his hand instead of sitting on the counter. He’s not really sure how that happened.

“Hey, I value my neck, it was my pleasure,” says the guy. He sort of— tips his head, or something— at Kris, then he’s gone again, back to his original spot at the busier end of the bar.

After a minute, Kris tries his drink (because what else is he going to do, really). It’s sweet, like he expected, and fruity. Kris kind of likes it.

It doesn’t taste a thing like alcohol.

—

The fruity drink thing is nearly gone by the time Kris feels a hand at the small of his back — Kris only startles and tries to move away from it before he recognizes the person sliding into the space right next to him as Adam. Then he kinda leans into it. Just a little. Maybe.

“Adam! Oh, um, hey,” he says, tipping his head back so he can look up at Adam. He’s still pretty sure that there wasn’t any booze in his drink, but all of a sudden he feels like maybe there was.

There’s a very tiny curve just at the corner of Adam’s mouth. Kris decides to call it a smile.

“What are you doing here?” asks Adam.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Kris admits, and silently tells himself that, no, he probably shouldn’t lean into Adam— Adam isn’t _actually_ his boyfriend, just because his friends thinks he’s here to do really gay possibly illegal things with Adam doesn’t mean he actually is, and it’s maybe not a good idea to cuddle vampire mob bosses or whatever at the bar inside their totally hip, vampire-friendly club. Probably. “It’s, uh, cool that I be here, right?”

Adam’s hand at his back slides around to his hip, and then Kris is pressed all up against Adam’s side and Adam has his face tucked into that spot where Kris’s shoulder meets his neck.

“Yes,” Adam says against his skin, “you being here is very ‘cool’.”

“Oh,” says Kris. He’s kind of breathless, actually, out of, like, _nowhere_.

“My door is always open to you. You’re welcome whenever you want,” says Adam. Then he starts laying open-mouthed kisses all down Kris’s neck. He’s not sinking his fangs in, or anything, but he’s scraping lightly with his teeth and _sucking_ and— and— There are _so_ going to be more hickeys when he’s done. Probably— probably really _obvious_ ones.

Kris’s legs go a little weak. He sags against Adam, tilts his head farther back to give him more room, and lets him do whatever he wants.

Eventually — Kris couldn’t tell anyone how long it’s been if they held a _gun_ to his head, okay — Adam seems to have decided that Kris is marked up enough, because he starts just rubbing his mouth over Kris’s neck, licking at the skin a little. It’s— almost as distracting as the sucking-biting-not-blood-drinking thing. Kris is just gonna, gonna ignore the boner he _totally does not have_ right now, because he absolutely does not want to come in his pants up against the bar in the middle of a club. He just doesn’t.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

It takes Kris a bit to process the question, then another bit to remember why he’s here at the club to begin with.

“How’s the girl?” he finally asks.

“Girl?”

Adam pulls back. His smile falters, just barely; Kris almost doesn’t catch it.

Kris nods anyway. He really does want to know; he’s been having trouble not thinking about her, how that _could_ have been Katy, how _careful_ Adam was with her. “Yeah, the one from the restaurant last night,” he says. “The redhead? Is she okay?”

“She’s all right, considering. She’s back in my roo—”

Adam jerks, like someone sounded a horn in his ear, and he stops talking. He whips his head around, his eyes narrowing.

“Lisa, turn it off, now,” he says, quiet, and a second later the music cuts out.

A confused muttering starts in the crowd on the dance floor, but then a bunch of the crowd — the ones Kris sort of recognizes as most likely to be Adam’s people (the _vampires_ , his brain supplies) — startle, their heads turning the same direction Adam’s did.

A second after _that_ , Kris can hear it, too, faint enough that he would have thought he imagined it if he weren’t watching four dozen others react to it, too.

Screaming.

High and hurt, an edge of terrified.

“ _Allison_ ,” hisses Adam, lips pulled back away from his teeth. Then he moves, darting towards one of the side doors.

Kris doesn’t even think before he follows, the music coming back on as he does.

He comes out the door right behind Adam, into an alley between one of the club walls and one of the neighboring buildings. Several yards away, a man has a girl shoved up against the wall by some dumpsters. One of his hands is pawing at the front of her black minidress, while the other’s pushing hard on the underside of her chin, keeping her head forcibly turned away from him.

Kris can just barely see the girls eyes — glassy, dazed, and _scared_.

“Oh, shit,” he gasps, skidding to a stop.

Then Adam is there, at the man’s back. He leans forward, burying his teeth in the man’s neck, and _wrenches his head backwards_ in a spray of blood. He takes a chunk of flesh with him, which he spits out as the man screams in pain.

His stomach turning over, Kris takes several steps backwards.

If the screaming bothers Adam, it doesn’t show. He wraps a hand around the side of the man’s neck that he _didn’t just mutilate_ , and pulls him away from the girl, tosses him toward the other side of the alley. The man stays there for a moment, slumped against the wall with a hand over his bleeding neck, whimpering.

“You know who I am,” says Adam, looming over the man.

He nods. He looks— terrified.

“She’s of my coven,” Adam says, baring his bloodied teeth. “Never touch her again.”

The man just whimpers again.

Adam sneers, orders him out of his sight, and just like that the man flees.

Apparently satisfied with that, Adam moves back to the girl the man’d been attacking. Lagging a couple of seconds behind, Kris shifts his attention there, too.

It’s only as she half collapses, Adam’s arm at her back the only thing holding her up, that Kris recognizes her as the girl — the vampire — that Adam carried from the basement of the restaurant.

“I told you,” Adam is saying to her, fangs still on display, dangerous and dripping blood. “I _told you_ , you don’t leave my rooms.”

“I just wanted to dance!” says the redhead. Her protest would be more effective, Kris thinks, if she weren’t still shaking.

“And how is that working for you?”

“I didn’t know that would happen,” she mutters after a moment, her voice sullen but her expression sliding toward exhausted.

“Then you should have listened better,” snaps Adam, “because I did warn you.”

“I thought you were trying to scare me.”

“I _was_.”

Kris shivers, feels the familiar goosebumps run up his arms.

Adam gives his words a moment to sink in, then says, “Just because it was scary didn’t make it a lie.”

“Oh,” she says, softly.

“This was just a human.” Adam catches her chin and holds her head still, forces her to meet his steely look. “Think if it had been another vampire, Allison.”

She bites her lip, and drops her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not disobey me again.”

“I won’t,” she says. It’s more of a whisper, really.

After another long second, Adam lets her go.

“I’m taking you back to my rooms,” he says, only _now_ reaching into a pocket for something to wipe off the blood on his face. His waves his free hand at Kris. “You, too. Come on.”

—

Adam takes them through a different exterior door and down a short hall, into a room that Kris hasn’t seen before, barely bigger than a closet, with nothing but a desk in the corner and an old couch along one wall. It’s a little chilly, probably due to the window above the desk being propped open. There’s none of the strange-smelling smoke that Kris was expecting, the stuff he hazily remembers from the last time he was in Kaleidoscope’s back rooms.

Guiding Allison to sit at one end of the couch, Adam _looks_ at Kris until he does the same at the other end.

Adam nods, apparently pleased. “Stay, both of you,” he says, turning away. “I have to take care of some things. Then I’m taking you back to your parents’ house, Kris.”

“Uh. Okay?”

Adam nods again, and leaves.

“So. Hi,” Kris says after a few minutes, squirming in his seat, the awkward silence like a heavy itch all over his skin. “I’m, uh. I’m Kris.”

She stares at him. She’s got mascara running down her cheeks. “I know.”

“And you’re Allison, right?” he tries. “I’m— I was with Adam. When we found you.”

“Yeah, they told me about you,” she says. Her eyes are— they’re on his neck.

“Um.” Kris licks his lips. “Who told you what?”

“The coven lieutenants,” she says, and it takes Kris a second to realize she means Brad and Tommy. “They told me what you are.”

“A human, you mean,” mutters Kris, wondering if he should feel insulted that apparently people have to warn each other about him before meeting him.

But “Adam’s Favorite,” is what she says, capitalization and all.

Kris blinks.

Wait, what? No, really, _what_?

“What,” he says.

“You _are_ , aren’t you?”

“I don’t even know what you just said,” Kris tells her, very seriously.

She frowns, a little. “He has drunk from you, hasn’t he? More than once?”

Kris nods.

“And he wants to again?”

“Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m _assuming_ , with the way he looks at my neck, but. Uh. Yeah,” says Kris.

“But he hasn’t told you that he does?” she presses.

“Not in so many words, no,” says Kris. A pause. “Actually, not in any words. It hasn’t, uh, come up.”

“Yet he’s _helping_ you,” says Allison. She leans forward some, eyeing Kris in an odd, intent way. “To look for your girlfriend.”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I don’t know what they told you, she’s my best friend not my girlfriend, but other than that—”

“He hasn’t asked anything in return?”

Kris hesitates. “No. Actually, no, he hasn’t.”

Allison nods, apparently, somehow, satisfied by this. “So. His favorite, then,” she says, a _second_ time.

“Yeah, okay,” Kris manages, because he doesn’t know what else to.

“Thank you,” she says, abruptly, making Kris jump. “I already said it to Adam, but I wanted to say it to you, too. Thank you, really. I’m so glad you got me out of there.”

She smiles, a little hollow but mostly real, and just like that she looks like she could be one of the girls at Kris’s school.

Kris smiles back, relaxing a little. “You’re welcome.”

By the time Adam walks back in to collect Kris, they’re talking about music, and Allison has wiped the mascara tracks off her face. Kris feels a little proud of himself.

—

“You can’t take me home,” is the first thing Kris says, once they’re in the car.

Adam looks at him sideways, one eyebrow raised.

“You need to take me to my friend’s house,” Kris explains, awkwardly. “That’s where my parents think I am, with my friends. They’re, uh, covering for me.”

“Right,” says Adam. “Tell me how to get there.”

Kris opens his mouth tell him. He closes it again. Then, “Will you tell me about Allison?”

Adam makes a noise that Kris will never admit to calling a huff (because he isn’t actually stupid and has no desire to make Adam mad). “Yes, Kris Allen, I’ll tell you about Allison.”

“Oh. Okay. Uh, good,” Kris says, and gives Adam John’s address.

Adam starts the car, and then they’re roaring away from the club and Kris is glad he put his seatbelt on. “I was going to tell you, anyway.”

Kris swallows. “Oh.”

They drive in relative silence for a minute, then Adam prompts, “What did you want to know?”

“How did she end up, you know, _there_? Like she was?”

“A captive vampire, you mean?”

Kris nods.

“She was drunk when they Turned her, didn’t know what she was agreeing to, and when she freaked out after the Change, after she sobered up, they locked her in that room and left her,” says Adam, lip curled back away from his fangs, sneering. “She’s eighteen, and her family’s never going to understand what happened to her.”

Kris starts to nod again, but stops. He stares. “What, are you gonna _tell_ them? That she’s _now a vampire_?” he asks, and so what if his voice gets a little high toward the end there? He’s _surprised_. He’d sort of been under the impression that the existence of vampires wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that anyone went around talking about willy-nilly.

“Of course,” says Adam. He sounds… totally unfazed.

“But— but _why_?”

“Why not?” Adam raises his eyebrows at what Kris knows must be a pretty stupid incredulous look on his face. “They’re her family. It would be cruel of me, as the leader of her new coven, to deny them to her outright.”

“Her— _her_ coven? So, what, you’re, you’re just going to take her in? Mentor her?”

“She needs _someone_ to,” says Adam. “She doesn’t know anything about being a vampire, about what she’s capable of.”

“And that someone’s you?”

Adam just looks at him.

“You don’t even know her,” Kris says softly. He doesn’t _get_ it, okay, altruistic just doesn’t seem like an Adam characteristic.

“She’s a newborn with no allegiance,” says Adam, “I don’t need to know her. If I help her now, I’ll have a loyal subordinate for life.”

Oh. Kris swallows. Yeah, okay, that sounds a lot more like—

“Besides. I like her.”

Oh. Crap.

And Adam is, is, he’s almost _smiling_ , for real smiling. Something in Kris’s chest gets tight and weird. His stomach even does something that could be described as _fluttering_. Oh— oh.

Double crap.

“Do you,” he blurts, suddenly desperate to be _saying something_ , he thinks Adam can probably tell how frantic his heartbeat just got and Kris would really rather not talk about what that means. “Do you, uh, do that a lot? Just, add people to your gang— uh, coven? Your coven. Do you?”

“Well, if I take over a coven, I usually absorb their members, especially the lower ranking ones,” says Adam. He either hasn’t noticed Kris’s weirdness, or he’s pretending not to have. Kris wouldn’t put bets on which is most likely.

“I don’t take random humans, or people I don’t think will follow my code.” Adam meets his eyes. “And I don’t Turn people under twenty-four. Not _anyone_.”

“Oh,” says Kris. “Uh, okay.”

Adam continues to stare at him. Almost like he’s expecting something, or… something.

“That’s good?” Kris tries. Adam’s brows draw together, like he’s about to start frowning, so Kris hurries to add, “I mean, that makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t want to Turn anybody too young, want to make sure the people you’re turning know what they’re getting into. I get it, it’s. I get it.”

Adam’s expression smoothes out, but he still looks serious as he nods and says, “Good, then you understand.”

“Sure,” says Kris, even though he doesn’t think he does, really. But Adam seems sort of weirdly fixated on this and it’s freaking Kris out a little.

“Good,” Adam repeats.

—

Adam catches Kris’s hand, as he’s about to get out of the car at the foot of John’s driveway, and presses something into it.

Kris looks between their clasped hands and Adam’s face. “Adam? What…”

“Call me,” says Adam, his fingers gripping Kris’s just a bit harder for a second. “Or text me.”

“Why?” Kris bites his lip. “Are you going to keep looking?”

Adam smiles. It’s tiny, and soft, and Kris just wants to stare at it forever.

“Call me,” Adam says again, which Kris takes for a ‘yes’, then he lets Kris go.

It’s only after Kris has snuck through John’s bedroom window and onto the camping mat his sleeping friends left on the floor for him that he remembers to look at whatever it is that Adam gave him.

It’s a black business card, shiny like an oilslick in the dim bluish light of his cellphone.

It says _Adam_ and a phone number, and nothing else.

Kris enters the number on his phone, just to be safe. Still, he falls asleep with the card held tight in his fist, under his pillow.

—

The only thing Kris really remembers from Monday is the ride to school —

“You know how we said we were okay with you going off to bang your cradle-robbing boyfriend?” says Charles, from behind the wheel of his car.

Kris makes an acknowledging noise. He doesn’t open his eyes, or lift his head from where he’s leaning it against the window of the backseat.

“We totally only said that because we didn’t think that after you went off you’d _actually bang him_ ,” says John.

“I didn’t,” says Kris. “There was no banging.”

“And we might believe you,” Charles assures him.

“If you didn’t look like you went ten rounds with an alley cat,” says John.

Kris cracks open an eye to glare at them. “I do not.”

“Ten rounds with _something_ ,” says John. “Like a cradle-robber.”

“And anyway,” Kris goes on, pretending he hasn’t heard John, “Adam isn’t my boyfriend.”

— and doing his best to ignore his parents’ disapproving faces across the dinner table. He almost feels like they _know_ , somehow, but that’s ridiculous. He’d be grounded forever, if they knew.

Kris spends a lot of time staring at his plate, and trying not to grin.

He doesn’t think to go out looking for Katy on his own until he’s almost all the way asleep that night. He makes a mental note to talk to Adam about it. And promptly falls asleep.

—

_anything yet?_ he sends to Adam’s number on Tuesday morning as he’s getting ready for school. He’s not really expecting a reply.

He gets one during English.

 _Exploring some possibilities_.

Kris snorts, which earns him a dirty look from the teacher, but she can’t see his phone in his lap under the desk so Kris is absolutely not going to worry about it.

 _and that means what_ he asks.

 _That there’s nothing conclusive to share_ , is what Adam apparently thinks is an answer, but it comes almost immediately, so Kris isn’t going to complain too hard.

 _but u are actually lookin, right?_ he asks.

 _I said I would_ , sends Adam. _I am._

Which, yes, he had said that. He’d said it when Kris first told him about Katy being missing, and Kris wasn’t sure, at the time, if he believed Adam. Now he does. He’d worried, for a bit, right after they found Allison, that maybe that was Adam’s one contribution and he’d give up now, but—

He isn’t worried anymore.

_thanks_

_Don’t thank me_ , says Adam. _I don’t want you to thank me_.

Kris hesitates. Adam has said that before, or something like it. He almost talks himself out of asking, this time, but—

_what do u want?_

_You know what I want, Kris Allen. Don’t pretend you don’t._

And then, while Kris is still trying to decide what to say to that, he gets,

_I want you._

After reading it, Kris can’t stop grinning. That’s probably why the teacher very pointedly calls on him next, and he almost gets detention, because he can’t answer the question, like, at all.

He almost texts Adam back, but then the bell rings, and he forgets to until lunch is almost over, and he can’t think of anything to say that isn’t cripplingly awkward.

Adam doesn’t text him again, either, anyway, so Kris figures he probably doesn’t need to.

He still spends the rest of the day with a smile on his face.

—

_Are you busy?_

Kris gets the text Wednesday evening, while he’s sort of half-heartedly doing homework after dinner. It’s from Adam.

 _no_ , he sends back, immediately. _y?_

_Meet me in the park just outside your neighborhood. Five minutes._

Kris throws down his pencil and goes to find his shoes.

“Mom? I’m taking a walk!”

The slam of the front door behind him blocks out any answer she might have made.

—

Adam is sitting on the bench farthest from the parking lot, where his car is looking deliciously conspicuous, when Kris walks into the park. It’s just past twilight, but Adam is wearing sunglasses and leather. Like usual, apparently, when he’s outside his club. Or, minus the sunglasses, _inside_ it.

“Hi,” Kris says, kind of breathlessly, even though _he wasn’t running_ , and collapses onto the bench next to Adam. “I got your text.”

“I assumed as much, seeing as you answered it,” says Adam. He’s not _quite_ smiling, but it looks like he’s _thinking_ about it. “Just like you answered my other texts this week.”

Kris hears ‘I want you’ in his head and smiles back.

“Well,” Adam corrects, after a second, “just like you answered _most_ of my texts.”

Kris blushes. He rubs his suddenly sweaty hands on his jeans. He does _not_ scoot a little closer to Adam. Really.

“How can you do that, anyway?”

Adam just looks at him, still not-quite-smiling. “Do what?”

“Text me. While I’m at school, I mean,” says Kris.

“Would you prefer I texted you at another time, instead?”

“No! I just— I mean, don’t you sleep during the day?”

“Ah.” Something around Adam’s eyes loosens, and one corner of his mouth twitches, just a little. “Don’t you sleep at night?”

“Yeah, usually, but that totally doesn’t—” Kris breaks off, staring, as Adam raises an eyebrow and gives him a pointed look. “Oh.”

“Yes, ‘oh’,” says Adam. And if that’s what his amused face looks like all the time, Kris would almost be willing to be the butt of his jokes whenever he wants.

Only almost, though.

“Did you need something?” he asks.

“What?”

“Well, you’re meeting me,” Kris points out. “So I figured there was something you needed?”

Adam purses his lips, and seems to think about it. “I could use a picture of your Katy, actually. Do you have one?”

“Sure. I have some on my phone, I’ll send you one right now,” says Kris. He pulls his phone back out of his pocket where he shoved it after getting Adam’s last text. Texting the picture to Adam takes about two seconds. But—

“No,” Adam says, after looking at the picture on his own phone. “One without you in it.”

Kris kind of… stalls, over that. “Uh.” He goes to look away, but Adam catches his chin before he can turn his head.

“Kris,” he says, voice much gentler than it was a moment ago.

Meeting his stupid blue eyes is _hard_. Biting his lip, Kris does it anyway. “What.”

Okay, so he mumbled. He was using all his energy for the eye-contact thing. He was _allowed_.

Adam brushes his thumb across Kris’s lower lip, guiding it out from between Kris’s teeth. “I will not show _your_ picture to the sorts of people I might need to show this to, if I’m to find your Katy, and be sure it’s her this time.”

“ _Oh_.”

Adam strokes Kris’s mouth twice more, then drops his hand. “Find me another?”

Kris goes through the pictures of Katy on his phone, looking for a good one of just her. Finally he finds one that Adam seems to approve of, and texts it to him.

“Is this going to help?” asks Kris, as Adam is slipping his phone into an impossible-looking pocket in his leather pants. Adam frowns. Kris hurries to explain, “I mean, what if you show this, show _her_ to the local vampires or whatever, and none of them have seen her? What then?”

“Don’t worry, Kris Allen,” says Adam. “Those who Turned Allison weren’t the only coven in the area. And there are human avenues to explore. We’ll keep looking for your Katy.”

“Thank you,” Kris makes himself say.

“We’ll find her,” Adam promises.

Kris looks away. “What if nothing happened to her, after all? What if she really did just run away to LA or whatever and I’m just being stupid to look, to think that she’d—”

“I said,” Adam breaks in, wrapping a hand around the back of Kris’s neck, “ _We’ll find her_. No matter where she is.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll know what happened to your friend, Kris.”

“Okay,” Kris says quietly. He looks up, meets Adam’s eyes. “Thanks, really.”

“Don’t thank me,” says Adam, sounding a little exasperated, and letting his hand fall away from Kris’s neck. Probably, he’s getting tired of saying that. But he _smiles_ , so Kris doesn’t worry about it. “Go back to your parents’ house.”

Kris goes.

—

_Don’t go anywhere tonight_ , Adam texts him on Thursday.

Kris frowns at his phone for a few seconds before hastily typing out his answer ( _what? y?_ ) and shoving his phone back into his lap where his chemistry teacher can’t see it.

When he checks his phone again a few hours later, he’s gotten only one text.

_Just stay in, Kris._

_i don’t want to_ , he sends back. _was gonna go to cale’s_

 _Stay in_ , Adam insists.

Kris bites his lip. He considers shoving his phone in his pocket and pretending he didn’t get that last text.

Instead, he sends back, _fine, okay_ , and faces Cale across the cafeteria table.

“I’m gonna have to bail on tonight, man,” he announces, just barely managing not to wince.

“But it’s nacho cheesy horror movie and Doritos night,” says Cale, frowning. “ _Dude_.”

Kris shrugs. “Sorry,” he says, and, by way of explanation, “Adam.”

He’s kind of expecting a bad reaction, since this’ll be the second time in less than a week that Adam’s been the reason that Kris has skipped hanging out with them.

Cale just pulls a face, and says “We can do it tomorrow, I guess.”

It’s Charles, sitting next to him, who rolls his eyes and starts — badly — singing Let’s Get It On.

Laughing, Kris throws his waffle fries at Charles’s face. Charles stops, laughing too.

That night, Kris only wonders a little — every few minutes — about why he shouldn’t be out tonight. He thinks of Adam ripping part of a man’s neck out with his _teeth_. He doesn’t go anywhere.

—

_We have a possible lead. A vampire coven. A bad one._

It comes very early on Friday morning, and by the time Kris is waking up to get ready for school, there’s another to go with it.

_My sources recognized the picture you gave me. It’s definitely her._

_where_ , Kris sends, without even bothering to pull his jeans up from the way he froze with them half-on when he checked his phone. _is she ok? alive??_

_Don’t know exact location yet. Will find out tonight._

Kris glances out his window, at the sun that’s already up, and swallows back the urge to demand they go get her _right this second_. Kris doesn’t everything about _real_ vampires, but all the stories and stuff can’t be entirely wrong. Daylight would probably be… not a good time for Adam to go after Katy. Kris isn’t even gonna try fooling himself that he could do it alone.

_adam. is she. alive?_

Adam doesn’t answer right away.

In fact, Adam doesn’t answer until Kris is heading into the school cafeteria for lunch.

_There’s… a chance._

Kris’s stomach rolls. He bites the inside of his cheek, which just makes it worse, and stares hard at his phone like that’s going to change Adam’s horrible, horrible text. It’s fucking _foreboding_ , is what it is.

It should be _good_ , that Kris is this close to knowing what happened to Katy. Sure, Kris hoped he was gonna find her alive, and _fine_ , but he’s been telling himself since the beginning that however it turns out he just wants to _know_ , and he should— he should be happy that he’s going to, and soon. Right?

He isn’t.

Several feet ahead of where Kris stopped abruptly, Cale and Andrew turn back.

“Kris?” says Cale, voice pitchy with concern. “Hey, man, you okay?”

“I gotta—” is all Kris can get out, before he dashes for the nearest bathroom.

He locks himself in the stall farthest from the door, curls up over the toilet, heaves until his stomach cramps painfully, and heaves some more. Nothing comes up.

He stays in the bathroom until the bell rings, when he _makes_ himself get back to his feet.

He’s a little shaky, but he gets his hands and faced washed, and his knees hold him until he can get to his next class and collapse into a seat.

Tonight, Adam will know where Katy is.

Tonight.

—

Kris goes over to Cale’s with the guys for their rescheduled cheesefest, like he promised he would. He’s twitchy, though, twitchy enough that even _he_ notices it, and the guys give him sideways worried looks all evening.

Just as they’re starting the second movie, Kris’s phone rings. It earns him a couple of annoyed looks for not putting it on silent, but he ignores them. He doesn’t even care.

It’s Adam’s number.

“I’ma take this,” Kris mumbles, and leaves the basement rec room before any of his friends can protest.

“ _Did you find her_?”

“I know where she is, yes,” Adam says, sounding calm despite the note of blatant panic in Kris’s voice. “It’s definitely the vampires that have her. I’m taking some people after her now.”

“Okay. Yeah. Okay, that’s good. Only, only it’s not, is it?”

“It could be worse,” says Adam. If he’s trying to sound reassuring, he is _really bad_ at it. “At least I know what we’re up against.”

“You said this was a bad coven?”

“Yes. Worse than what Turned Allison,” Adam admits.

Crap. Crap, crap, crap, _shit_. “And what have they done with Katy?”

“Apparently, they grabbed her from one of the clubs in the city and took her to a warehouse they own. From there, we don’t know, but evidence suggests a similar thing has happened in the past to several other girls that match her description.”

_Don’t hyperventilate, Kris. Breathe._

“They have her in a _warehouse_? What the heck. A warehouse where?” Kris asks, after he gets done reminding his lungs to keep working.

“Why,” says Adam.

“Because I want to know.” Kris swallows through the tightness in his throat. “Where’s the warehouse?”

“Kris, you don’t need—”

“ _Where_?” says Kris. “Adam, c’mon, where is it?”

Adam makes an annoyed noise, but says, “North of the city. By the river.”

“Okay,” says Kris. He thinks about it, adds up the distance in his head quickly, then says, “I can be there in thirty minutes— no, twenty.”

“Kris, no,” says Adam, his voice rising sharply. “ _No_. Don’t you dare—”

“See you soon,” Kris says, and hangs up.

If Katy might be there— If Adam _will_ be there— These are vampires, bad ones, worse than the ones whose group Adam used Allison as an excuse to take over. Adam’s going.

Kris can’t be anywhere else.

He goes back into the rec room. “Guys, I gotta go,” he announces, which makes them look up from the movie.

“What’s up?” asks Cale, a frown on his face. Kris wonders if he’s thinking about how Kris ran off during lunch, then dismisses it because, really, it’s so not important right now, it _doesn’t matter_.

There’s only one thing that matters.

“Adam found Katy.”

They stare at him. After a second, John fumbles for the remote without looking away from Kris, and stops the movie.

“Is that some kind of joke?” demands Cale.

“No,” says Kris, shaking his head. “He’s been looking for her, I asked him, and now he’s _found_ her.”

“She ran away,” Charles snaps. “Katy ran away to LA, why would you have your creepy older boyfriend looking for her?”

Kris shakes his head, his jaw clenched, before he replies, “She didn’t run away, she was _taken_. Adam found her. And he isn’t my boyfriend.”

Charles looks like he’s going to say something more that Kris won’t like, but John interrupts before he can. John… John looks kind of sick, actually. “ _Taken_?” he asks, carefully. “What do you mean, she was _taken_? What kind of taken?”

It’s not a question Kris can answer.

“Look, she was missing but now I know where she is, Adam’s gonna go get her, and I have to be there too,” he says, firmly. “I’m sorry.” This time, he doesn’t wait for a response, just makes for the stairs.

“Kris! You’re not really thinking of going wherever—”

“I have to,” Kris calls over his shoulder, not slowing.

Behind him, he hears Charles say, “Oh, the hell with it,” and then several sets of footsteps following him. “Hey, asshole, wait up, we’re coming too!”

It shouldn’t make Kris grin, but it does.

“I’m driving,” he says, when they skid to a stop beside Cale’s car. They don’t argue with him. Cale tosses over his keys.

—

It’s more than twenty minutes before they get to the warehouse district North of the city, and find the one Adam must have been talking about — but that part, at least, is easy, because there are cars (including Adam’s ridiculous shiny one) with their doors open and their engines running at either end of the little not-street leading to the warehouse’s main doors. And there are people, too, some walking around who look over as Kris pulls up, and… a lot on the ground, not moving.

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” breathes John, from the seat behind Kris.

Kris eases Cale’s car into park, shuts it off. He doesn’t see Adam, but he recognizes most of the people who’re still on their feet, and— Yes, that’s Brad, and Tommy, coming out of the warehouse.

“What the fuck is this, Kris?” says Charles, sounding like there’s something strangling him.

Car door half open, Kris freezes. He looks at his friends, who are all looking back at him with various pale, shocked faces. “Uh. I guess I didn’t mention…?”

For a second, Charles just gapes at him. “No _shit_ , you didn’t mention.”

Kris winces. “Wait here?” he asks, not very hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” says Cale, grabbing Kris’s arm so he can’t get away.

“Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do,” says John. He reaches around the seat and catches Kris’s shoulder, for good measure.

“You’re not going _anywhere_ ,” says Charles, from the other seat in the back, “Until you tell us what the fuck you’re into, here.”

He stares at them. They stare back.

What the hell, he’s brought them this far, right?

“Vampires,” he blurts. “They’re all vampires.”

For a few seconds, nothing happens.

“You’re shitting me,” says Charles.

“No, really, they’re vampires. Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you,” Kris promises. He isn’t entirely _positive_ it’s a promise he can keep, but he’s at least fairly sure it is. He shrugs out from under their hands. “Mine are the good guys.”

“Right,” mutters Cale, his stare shifting out the windshield to the people in front of the warehouse. “Sure they are.”

“Look, just, stay here, I’ll be back… soon,” says Kris. He gets out of the car and starts toward Brad.

Brad moves to meet him.

“Well,” says Brad. He’s got a kerchief in his hand, is tracing it around his mouth carefully, wiping up blood that is clearly not his own. “That was… particularly vicious.”

“What?” says Kris, alarmed.

“You didn’t happen to do anything stupid during your call with the Boss, did you?” asks Tommy, coming over to list against Brad’s shoulder. He’s pale, and there are red stains on his clothes, but Kris can’t see any marks on his skin, so he refuses to speculate what happened to him. Clearly he’s all right, if he’s speaking to Kris. “Like tell him you intended to show up here, perhaps?”

“I, uh.” Kris looks away, shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Maybe?”

“Jesus,” says Tommy, shaking his head. “No wonder.”

“You idiot,” says Brad, but it sounds a little amazed, and almost fond.

“What?”

“Adam was _brutal_ tonight,” Brad explains, gently, like he’s doing Kris a favor, telling him this. “Even for him. And yeah, he doesn’t like this coven, but it was still an unnecessary show of force.”

“We weren’t sure what his deal was,” adds Tommy.

“But obviously, it was you.”

Kris frowns. “I’m not sure what you mean?”

They roll their eyes at him.

“ _Obviously_ ,” says Tommy, and Brad finishes, “He was worried about you.”

“He.” Kris’s heart thuds against his ribs, hard. “He was?”

“Idiot,” Brad says again, shaking his head.

—

“Why can’t I?” Kris demands, five minutes later.

Tommy doesn’t take his hand off Kris’s chest.

“It’s a nasty-ass coven of human-kidnappers, and the Boss went a little bit bloodmad at the _idea_ of you being near them,” says Tommy, pushing Kris back as he tries, again, to get by Tommy and into the warehouse. “Do you really need me to tell you why you can’t go in there?”

“Is Adam in there?”

“Yes,” says Brad. “But he’s fine. And you’re _not going in_.”

Kris glares at them.

“You’re really not,” says Tommy. After a beat, he — _very_ insincerely — adds, “Sorry.”

“Pardon us for keeping you from being murdered,” says Brad. He waves a hand toward Cale’s car, and a glance in that direction shows that Kris’s friends have climbed out and are hovering, uncertainly, around the car. They aren’t _doing_ anything, aren’t trying to talk to anyone, but they’re definitely out, and watching. “Murdered where your friends can see, I might add.”

“I’m not going to be—” Kris starts. He gets no further, because—

There are people coming out of the warehouse. One person, specifically, who Kris is very glad to see right now.

“ _Adam_ ,” Kris doesn’t quite shout, and this time Tommy and Brad let him push past them and then he’s _running_ and he doesn’t stop until he faceplants in Adam’s chest. Adam’s arms come around him, pulling him closer for just a second, then they’re pushing him back, and Kris discovers that he’s still capable of being worried, even though Adam is right there in front of him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” says Adam, his hands reassuringly heavy on Kris’s shoulders.

“What happen—”

But he’s interrupted with “Tell me, Kris Allen,” and Adam’s smiling, as confident and self-satisfied as Kris’s first, hazy memory of him, “is this yours?”

“What?” says Kris, but his voice dies right after, because there’s someone beside Adam now, someone short and blond and _familiar_ , smiling at him, and—

“ _Katy_?”

“Hey, Kris.”

She’s pale, with huge dark circles under her too-wide eyes, and she looks exhausted. One of Adam’s vampires is standing just behind her, holding her up, Kris realizes. She looks _horrible_.

She’s alive. She’s still human.

She’s _alive_.

“Oh, my God,” breathes Kris, and he trips forward and catches her in a hug that’s probably too tight— but her arms go around him immediately, she’s hugging him back like she thought she’d never see him again, so Kris isn’t gonna worry about how much force he’s using. “ _Katy_. Oh, God. Katy.”

“Hey,” Adam says, softly, and his hands are on Kris’s arms, tugging them loose, easing Kris back. “Let her breathe. We’ve got her now. She’s not going anywhere.”

“She’s all right?” Kris asks, without looking away from her, and, trying again to reach for her, “You _are_ all right?”

“I’m gonna be fine,” she says. But that’s— That’s not the same as _I’m all right_ , and—

“Let her go,” says Adam, pulling Kris back a little more. “Let her get out of here. I promise, she’s okay.”

“But—”

“Kris,” and the way Adam says his name is so _firm_ , like he thinks him saying it should be enough to make Kris listen to him. “Let her go.”

“ _Adam_ —”

But Adam keeps tugging him away, hands strong on Kris, unrelenting. “No.”

Katy watches without saying anything, but every bit farther away Kris gets her eyes get a little wider, her face a little whiter, her lips a little tenser.

“I’ll see you,” Kris calls out to her. He hopes it’s reassuring. “Tomorrow. I’ll come by and see you, okay?”

“Okay,” she says, and Kris barely hears it, because Adam’s pushing him up against the side of the warehouse and looming in close, blocking out everything else, and—

Okay, yeah, he does _not_ look happy.

Kris is _so_ about to get yelled at.

“Kris,” and Adam goes serious now, really serious, no smugness or anything on his face, “what are you doing here?”

“Backing you up?”

Adam’s lip curls, exposing his teeth. “I didn’t need backup. Not from you.”

“You were going up against a bunch of vampires that even you said were gonna be violent!”

“I can deal with violence,” says Adam. “I’m _built_ for it. You are not.”

“So I should have just stayed away?” Kris demands, hearing his voice rise indignantly.

“As you are now? _Yes_.”

“Look, okay, I get that you’re better equipped for the whole, you know, fighting vampires thing, but Adam, I couldn’t just not _be_ here, can’t let you do this alone.”

“I was hardly _alone_. Or did you not notice how many of my coven I brought?”

“That’s not the same thing! They’re not _me_!”

Kris hadn’t meant to yell that, but that’s how it comes out; too loud, and a little shrill. For some reason, it makes Adam’s expression soften, and he moves in closer, crowding so he’s actually touching Kris most of the way down their bodies.

“I understand that you want to protect me. I want to protect you, as well. At the moment, both of those objectives can best be served by you keeping well away from my conflicts with other vampires.”

“I don’t—” Kris falters. He frowns. “What do you mean, both of those?”

“I will go to _desperate_ measures to keep you from harm,” Adam says, flatly, his hands curling tighter where they have hold of Kris’s arms. “Desperation makes me reckless, and that makes me vulnerable. Having your fragile human form present during a real fight is a recipe for _disaster_.”

Kris’s frown turns into a scowl. He doesn’t care. “So I’m just supposed to do _nothing_?”

“You’re _supposed_ to not let yourself end up as a tragic story on the—”

“Six o’clock news, yeah,” finishes Kris, his annoyance draining away suddenly, because Adam just, he looks so _displeased_ with the idea of Kris getting— getting his throat ripped out or his head torn off or whatever happens when the _bad_ vampires go after you. He looks _worried_.

Kris is really bad at staying mad at… people. Especially worried ones.

“I guess maybe I didn’t need to be here.”

“No,” agrees Adam, bending so he can do that nuzzling thing he’s always doing to Kris’s neck. “No, you didn’t need to be.”

“I could’ve just gone to the club. To wait for you,” Kris adds. “I guess that would have been… better?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so.” Kris takes a deep breath. “That. Next time, or whatever.”

“Good.”

After one, tiny little kiss to the side of his neck, that Kris isn’t even entirely positive he didn’t imagine, Adam lifts his head.

“Now, I think you’d better go talk to your humans,” he says.

“What?”

Adam gestures toward Cale’s car. “They’re getting anxious.”

“What?” Kris looks, and, yeah, his friends definitely look less than comfortable. Charles and John were staring at Kris and Adam, but turn away as Kris looks over; Cale, wide-eyed, is watching Tommy order around the vampires cleaning up all the, the _bodies_ , and whatever. Brad escorts a couple of people from inside the warehouse to a car near them, and all three flinch.

Kris grimaces. “Oh. Okay, I think you’re right.”

Adam steps back. He pulls Kris with him away from the wall. “Go,” he says, giving Kris a gentle push in their direction. “Calm their panic. We’ll talk, after.”

—

“That was _Katy_ ,” says John, when Kris reaches them. “Actually Katy.”

“Uh, yeah. I told you that’s why we were coming here.”

“Yeah, but Kris,” says Charles, “we totally didn’t believe you.”

“But you believe me now, right,” Kris says, wincing a little even as the words leave him — because, okay, he’s aware enough to know that it must have sounded pretty ridiculous, back at Cale’s house. What with him getting a phone call in the middle of the night and trying to just run out on them. Admittedly not the best way to look convincing.

“Yeah, man,” says Cale. “We believe you.”

“I’m even reconsidering not believing you on that whole… other thing?” Charles puts in.

John _hms_. It’s one of his I’m-thinking-about-this noises. “You mean the vampire thing.”

“The vampire thing, yeah. Pretty sure I might believe that one, too.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, and really kind of wishing he didn’t have to be having this conversation, Kris looks away. “Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Kris lifts his head, meets Charles’s eyes. There’s a speculative expression on Charles’s face, serious and considering.

“So, your boyfriend’s a vampire,” says Charles.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” says Kris, automatic, and feels his face flush hotly, because he really can’t seem to manage to say that in a believable way no matter how many times he tries, even though it’s _totally the truth_.

Charles stares at him. “Really.”

“He isn’t!”

“So what you’re saying,” says John, sounding as thoroughly unimpressed as Charles looks, “is that he _is_ a vampire, but you’re not dating. You’ve never been dating.”

Something that doesn’t feel entirely like relief sweeps Kris. “Yeah. Exactly,” he says, nodding.

John nods along with him. “Right. You’re just a giant slut for him.”

“I’m not— I didn’t—” says Kris, sputtering, properly red-faced now and, oh, God. This is so _embarrassing_ , why would his friends even—

“Kris,” calls Adam.

“Yeah, okay,” Kris calls back. “Coming.”

His friends are laughing at him before he even turns around.

So.

 _That_ went a lot better than it _could_ have, at least.

—

Adam is standing between the body of his car and the open driver’s side door, one arm propped on the roof and the other dangling down over the window. The corner of his mouth is quirked up.

“A giant slut for me, really?”

“Oh, my _God_ ,” says Kris. He wishes he couldn’t feel himself blushing.

“Well, that part, I won’t dispute,” Adam says, which, oh _man_ , is totally worse.

Kris covers his eyes with his hand. “Can’t we just pretend you didn’t hear that conversation? Like, at all?”

“No,” says Adam. He reaches out with the arm that had been hanging on the window, wrapping his fingers around Kris’s wrist and pulling his hand away from his face. “You lied to them.”

Kris blinks.

“Uh, no, I didn’t? Pretty sure I told them the truth,” he says. Then immediately winces. “Should I not have done that, the vampire thing? They think you’re the good guys, at least.”

“Telling them that was fine,” says Adam.

Kris relaxes, a little. “Oh. Okay. Good.”

“But why did you tell them I wasn’t your boyfriend?”

“What,” says Kris, and when Adam just looks at him blankly, he adds, “No, really, _what_?”

Over by the warehouse doors, someone laughs. Kris thinks it was Brad.

Adam’s face takes on a kind of pinched look. “You told them I wasn’t your boyfriend,” he explains — or at least _tries_ to, probably, but Kris doesn’t really feel like giving him credit for it since it explains nothing, and, just, _what_? “Why did you do that?”

“Uh, because you aren’t?”

Adam’s lips pull back, a little, and his grip on Kris’s wrist goes almost painfully tight, there are probably going to be _bruises_ later, just what Kris needs. And Adam—

Wait.

 _Bruises_.

Oh.

Bruises; marks— On Kris’s _neck_ —

And Adam’s a _vampire_.

Oh, shit.

“You think you are my boyfriend!” Kris accuses, in a really undignified, bleating fashion. Across the way, the previous laugh becomes a quickly squashed cackle, and yeah, that was definitely Brad.

Adam goes a bit squinty.

Kris splutters. “You _do_! Ohmigod!”

“You didn’t know?” says Adam, and he sounds as surprised as Kris feels.

“How would I have known?” demands Kris. “You didn’t _say_ anything.”

Adam’s face goes back to looking pinched and squinty. “Do you mind?” he asks.

“That you didn’t even say anything? Or _ask me out_? Yes!”

“And the fact I _am_ your boyfriend?”

Kris considers saying that yes, he does mind that— except he’s starting to think it would be a lie. Instead, he says, “Why couldn’t you even ask?”

“… Oops,” says Adam. He does _not_ sound convincing.

Kris tries, unsuccessfully, to yank his hand away from Adam’s hold so he can put them both over his face, and pretend this entire situation isn’t happening.

“I’m gonna go now,” he says, muffled by the hand he did manage to bring up.

Taking a step back, Kris turns away, only to be brought up short by Adam _still not letting go_ of him.

“… Can I have my hand back?” he asks.

“You’re going back to your parents’ house?” says Adam.

Kris nods. It’s only _after_ that, that Adam lets go of him.

“Can you make it back to your parents’ house on your own, or do I need to give you a ride?”

“No, it’s okay. I’m good,” says Kris.

“You’re sure?” presses Adam, and oh wow, that pinched look must be his _concerned_ face. “I could take you.”

It totally _is_ his concerned face.

“Adam,” says Kris, unable to keep back his stupid, fond smile. To be fair, he doesn’t really try that hard. “It’s fine, the guys’ll take me.”

Adam’s lips thin. After a second, he says, “Text me when you get there,” like he’s conceding something horrifically painful to him.

—

_i’m home_ , says Kris, after easing his bedroom door carefully, quietly closed behind him.

 _Thank you_ , is all Adam says, but he says it so close to instantly that Kris doesn’t think he’s off-base in assuming that Adam had his phone actually in his hand.

 _everything still alrite?_ Kris asks.

It’s a few minutes before he gets anything else. His teeth are brushed, he’s in his pajamas, and the only thing keeping him from crawling into bed and falling asleep _right now_ is the lack of reply.

_Everything’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Kris Allen._

If Kris falls asleep with a ridiculous grin on his face, before his head even hits the pillow, well, his best friend is safe for the first time in weeks — and anyway, there’s nobody to call him on it.

—

As soon as he can get away, Kris goes to the club. He’s been there so often in the past three weeks, he’s pretty sure he knows the way there well enough that he could get there in his sleep. He doesn’t think Adam would like it if he tried.

“There you are,” says Brad, as soon as Kris steps into the club proper, catching his arm. “Come on, he’s been waiting for you.”

Kris isn’t really sure why it was _Brad_ waiting for him, but he follows, because why not? Following Brad hasn’t ever actually turned out that bad for him, so far. He kind of almost trusts him, at this point.

They go to the door into the back, then through, with nothing more than a “Hey, Jimmy” from Brad and an “Oh, good,” from the doorkeeper — whose name, apparently, is Jimmy, and who is, apparently, very pleased to see Kris being towed into Adam’s back rooms. Again.

Kris is a little confused at how _not_ confused he feels; every other time he’s been back here, which admittedly hadn’t been very often or for that long, his brain has started feeling foggy and disconnected almost before he’d taken a single step. This time, he can actually pay attention to where they’re going, knows which turns they’re taking, can see the corridors and the doorways. He notices the air is almost smokeless— except when they round a corner and nearly run into a vampire Kris has never seen before, leaning against the wall, taking a drag from something that is definitely not a cigarette. Kris inhales without thinking, has a second to think _oh, hey, there’s the brain fog_ , and then—

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” says Brad, voice like a lash. “Put that out, before I tell the Boss you still can’t do what you’re told.”

Sullenly, the vampire stubs out the not-cigarette, showing his fangs the tiniest bit in what Kris is suddenly sure is the vampire version of a pout. “There, okay, it’s gone. Don’t tell him, please. I won’t do it again.”

“Open a window, imbecile,” says Brad. He tows Kris away.

—

Adam’s face brightens as soon as Kris walks into the room, getting brighter the closer Kris gets to him, until Kris is within arms reach of Adam’s throne— er, chair, and Adam is beaming like a kid in a candy store. Kris can’t help smiling back.

“Hey,” he says. His voice comes out ridiculously soft. He’s going to pretend it didn’t.

Adam reaches out and curls his fingers around Kris’s wrist. Unresisting, distracted by Adam’s smile, Kris finds himself pulled in close between Adam’s legs.

Without letting go of Kris’s wrist, Adam leans up and in. He nuzzles at Kris’s neck and makes a noise that can only classify as happy.

“Adam?” says Kris cautiously. Usually he at least gets acknowledged before the neck-molesting starts.

“Mm?”

“How’s Katy?”

“Not now,” says Adam. He shifts to mouth at the edge of Kris’s collarbone, exposed by his shirt. Kris gasps, tries to stifle a little moan when the lips against him switch almost immediately to the hint of teeth. Adam makes the happy noise again. “I’ve got somebody coming, I’ll tell you later.”

“Adam—”

“Boss?” Tommy calls from the doorway. “She’s here.”

Adam doesn’t pull away immediately, keeps mouthing at Kris’s neck for a couple of seconds. Even then, he doesn’t so much pull away as he does move _Kris_ , pushing him back and saying, “Brad.”

Hands close on Kris’s shoulders, tugging him toward the side of the room. Brad doesn’t let him go until Kris’s more or less backed against the wall, and _then_ Brad steps in front of him.

Kris blinks stupidly. “Uh, what—”

“All right, Tommy,” says Adam. He’s slouched further down in his chair, sprawled himself out like he’s relaxing on a couch in someone’s living room, rather than sitting in what might as well be a throne in the back of his vampire night club. “Let her in.”

Tommy nods. He beckons to someone out in the hallway, and a moment later two other of Adam’s people walk past him into the room, a third vampire between them. Kris doesn’t know how he knows, but he’s _sure_ that she’s not one of Adam’s, not what he’s come to think of as _the good vampires_.

“Stop there,” Tommy says, sharply, when they get to the center of the room. She does, and he motions Adam’s vampires back, moving to stand next to and just in front of her. He doesn’t ever fully turn away from her, and his eyes are cold.

Whoever she is, Tommy’s clearly treating her with a kind of deference that’s mocking, bordering on actually hostile, and she’s throwing contempt right back at him, her lips twisted up in an open sneer.

“Coven Leader Rizzolini,” says Adam.

“Lambert,” she replies in the same tone.

 _Great. Hostility established_ , Kris thinks, and proceeds to majorly wish he weren’t in the room for whatever head honcho vampire pissing match this is.

“You’ve attacked my coven and killed my bloodmate.”

Adam smiles — no, Adam _bares his fangs_ at her — and counters that accusation with one of his own, saying, “You’ve been taking humans.”

The nastiness of her sneer ratchets up a notch or two. Or, like, _eleven_. “That’s none of your business.”

“It is when it’s in my city.”

“The whole city’s not yours,” says the other vampire, Rizzoloni or whatever her name is. “Nobody’s had all of it in over a century.”

Adam smiles coldly. “Hm. We’ll see about that.”

“Besides,” she adds, and Kris can _feel_ the contempt, “you’re one to talk.”

Adam’s smile freezes, his eyes narrow.

“Pretty piece you’ve got there,” Rigattoni goes on. Her voice is ugly, is making Kris’s _skin crawl_ , he thought that only happened in, like, movies— and when Kris glances toward her, the look on her face is even _uglier_. “Your little pet.”

“You want to shut up now,” says Adam.

“Is he just for blood, or do you fuck him, too?” She smirks, a vicious twist of her mouth, her eyes sliding over to Kris. The back of his neck prickles and he has to fight the urge to slink farther behind Brad and hide. “Body like that, I bet you fu— _urp_.”

Her voice cuts off at the end, turning into a strangled yelp abruptly.

Adam is out of his seat and across the room, his hand around her throat, snarling, “ _Don’t you look at him_.”

For a second, Rizzioni struggles. She tries to step back, away from Adam, but she can’t, held in place by his grip; the next moment she’s on her knees, staring up at Adam with wide, startled eyes.

“You look at me,” says Adam. His fangs are out, sharp and threatening, and his eyes are glittering in a way Kris has never seen. “You look _at me_.”

After a second, Ritzilini gives a jerky nod.

Kris stops holding his breath — and notices, a little late, that, um, he and Adam are the only two people on their feet. Even Brad and Tommy have hit their knees.

Adam waits a beat, watching the vampire at his feet like he expects her to do something else, then takes his hand away when she does nothing. He doesn’t return to his seat, but stays standing, looking down at the vampire on her knees in front of him. His expression is as cold and as hard and as _scary_ as Kris has ever seen it.

“I’m taking the city,” declares Adam.

Kris shivers, something sweeping down his spine that feels nothing — absolutely nothing — like disgust or even like fear. He bites his lip and tries, really actually tries, not to stare at Adam. He doesn’t do a very good job of it.

Ritamoni’s jaw clenches, muscles flexing visibly, before she makes herself say, “You may have killed my bloodmate, but that doesn’t mean our people will follow you.”

Adam scoffs. “Follow me? Your murdering, rapist clan of lawless _savages_? I wouldn’t have them if they wanted me to.”

“Then what do you think you’re going to—” she starts, but Adam doesn’t let her get any further.

“The city’s mine. If you, and your people, wish to stay in it, you’ll follow my code, and you’ll give me a meaningful cut of any profits you make _in my city_.”

Her face twists. “Do you really expect us to pay tribute? To _you_?”

A smile like ice flashes across Adam’s face. “Think of it as an appreciation fee. For my _lenience_ ,” he says.

“We won’t do it,” she spits, vehement.

“Fair enough. There is another option,” says Adam, in the same snarl he’d used when she’d looked at Kris. He waits a moment, like he wants to make sure everybody in the room knows _exactly_ what he means (and apparently they do, what with the way their eyes all go wide), then he adds, “It’s your choice.”

“You think we’d rather submit to you than die?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Adam asks, mocking.

Her lips pull back, but after a second, looking like she _hates_ it, she drops her head.

“I thought as much.” Adam turns around, and he’s _smirking_ as he says, dismissive, “Get her out of here.”

Tommy and two other vampires from before hurry to do so.

Adam glances around the room. His eyes land on Kris. “… Actually. _Everyone_ get out.”

Kris digs his fingernails into his palms, staring at Adam and doing his best to seem like there’s nothing unusual about his breathing.

“Not you,” Adam adds unnecessarily. His smirk softens.

“Adam,” Kris breathes. His knees don’t quite feel like they can hold him up much longer.

But they don’t have to, because Adam is there, towing Kris over to Adam’s chair again and sitting back down; Adam’s hands are on him, pulling him in to nestle between Adam’s thighs, where Adam can tip Kris’s chin up and get his mouth on Kris’s skin.

“You’re so good,” Adam says, his tone marveling, one hand slipping up Kris’s arm, over his shoulder, down his chest, down to his stomach, down down down— fingers finally curling around Kris’s hip, wrist brushing the hot line of Kris’s erection through his jeans and Kris freaking _whimpers_ , pushing into the faint, teasing touch. “So good for me, Kris.”

“ _Adam_.”

Close by, someone clears their throat.

Someone else growls at them.

“Not _now_ ,” Adam mutters against Kris’s neck, and it doesn’t sound like a growl, so—

Oh.

That was _Kris_.

He pulls away, flushing harder, and takes a step back.

Adam whines.

“Tommy,” he says, getting to his feet and following Kris’s retreat. “ _Go away_.”

“… uh, yeah, sure, Boss. Right.”

The sound of the door closing is unnaturally loud. Kris barely registers it.

He keeps backing up, stumbling a little, and Adam’s following him and just, like, _looming_ , all broad shoulders and long legs and his freaking _teeth_ — and he’s staring at Kris in this really fierce way and Kris’s skin feels like it’s on _fire_ he’s blushing so hard, crap, that’s probably not a good thing, it’s probably like taunting, to a vampire—

Kris’s back hits the wall.

“Adam,” he gasps.

Adam smiles, smug like he’s got something special, and suddenly he’s just _there_ , right there, crowding in against Kris. His arm comes up, braces against the wall, caging Kris in place. His other hand touches Kris’s neck, two fingertips pressing just a little on the mark that’s still there, enough to make Kris’s breath hitch.

Then his hand is moving, sliding down Kris’s body exactly the way it did a minute ago— only it’s not aiming for his hip this time, it’s going straight to the button of Kris’s jeans and flicking it open.

Kris is so hard it _hurts_. “Are you—”

Adam slides his zipper down.

“Oh God,” says Kris. His head thunks back against the wall, and then—

And then—

Adam’s hand is pushing into his pants, his _underwear_ , wrapping around Kris, and his hand is so _warm_ , so _big_ , Kris feels like he can’t breathe, like his brain is leaking out his ears.

Kris hasn’t ever really thought about letting somebody else do this, about what’d feel like to have somebody else stroking his dick. Which is what Adam is doing, these long, smooth jerks of his wrist, one right after another— and this, doing this _thing_ with his thumb across the head, and there are sparks behind Kris’s eyelids and his toes are curling in his shoes and his brain is just— not working.

“Adam,” he says, though it doesn’t really sound like a word, as he shoves his hips up at Adam, all he can manage.

Adam hums something against Kris’s neck. Kris can’t tell what it is, whether there were words or not, but it doesn’t matter because— 

Adam’s teeth break skin, sinking deep.

Kris gives a startled cry, almost a shout, and breaks, shuddering under Adam’s mouth and hands, spilling in his underwear.

“Oh, oh fuck,” he gasps, and something funny happens to his vision. He squeezes his eyes closed and tries to remember how to freaking _breathe_.

Adam holds on as Kris twitches through the aftershocks, hand uncurling from Kris’s to rub little circles low on Kris’s belly.

So.

So, that happened.

He just came with a guy’s — a _vampire’s_ — hand down his pants. A vampire who still has his mouth on Kris’s neck.

“Ah— _Adam_ ,” Kris manages after maybe two minutes or maybe ten, and _no_ , it isn’t a whimper, he’s just… kind of breathless. Still.

Adam lifts his head, leaving the wet skin of Kris’s neck to go cold in the air, and Kris opens his eyes to look at him. There’s blood on the corner of his mouth, _Kris’s blood_ , and his eyes are wide and dark and so very, very blue.

Kris shivers. He wants to kiss Adam and he wants to hide and he wants to do that again.

“Adam,” he repeats, because he doesn’t know how to _say_ any of that, and Adam’s hard against Kris’s hip but he’s not making any kind of move to get himself off, and Kris doesn’t know what to _do_. “I— Adam, please—”

“Shh,” says Adam. He smiles, just a little, softly, and Kris’s knees threaten to go all jelly-like and he is _really_ glad he’s basically not supporting himself. “I’ve got you.”

Then Adam’s mouth slides over his, warm and slick and sweet, not even a hint of fangs, and Adam kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him until Kris feels dizzy with it, barely holding himself upright with clinging hands on Adam’s shoulders.

It’s only once Kris is as cleaned up as he can get and his pants are back the way they belong, and Adam’s stopped giving him slow, lingering kisses one after another like he’s trying to convince himself _this_ one’ll be the last one, that Kris remembers he has something else to think about.

“Where’s Katy? I want to see her.”

“All right,” Adam says, after a beat. “But she’s not here.”

Kris can admit that, for just a second, he panics. “She’s not he—”

“She’s at my house. She’s _fine_. Don’t worry,” says Adam, with a little shake of his head.

“Oh.” Kris makes himself take a deep breath. “Right, she’s, of course she’s not here. That… that makes sense.”

After another, tiny hesitation, Adam says, “I’ll have Brad drive you over to see her. Then he’ll drive you back to your parents’ house.”

“Can I take her home?” asks Kris.

“No.”

Already nodding, Kris blinks, and freezes. “What? I don’t… Adam?”

“She doesn’t want to go home,” says Adam, putting his hand on Kris’s shoulder, a reassuring weight. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s necessary to make the police alter their report. Do you?”

“You.” Kris stares. That wasn’t what he thought Adam was going to say. At all. “You can’t mean— She’s going to LA?”

Adam nods. “I’m sending her with a couple of my people who’re going out there. It’s the least I can do.”

Kris chest tightens. He closes his mouth, and looks away.

Adam’s hand on his shoulder turns him back around. “Kris? What is it?”

“Just— Nothing.”

“Kris.”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

Adam frowns. “ _Kris_. Tell me.”

“We were supposed to go together,” he says, quietly.

“Oh.” Adam is silent a moment, then carefully, says, “I could take you out there with her, if you want.”

Kris thinks about saying yes. He thinks about going; about getting out of here, this stupid small town that’s never felt like where he belongs; about chasing Katy’s dream for them. He thinks about _leaving_. Now, after everything.

After Adam.

“No,” he finds himself saying. “No, I, I don’t want to go anywhere. I like it here. Now.”

Adam’s grin is dazzling.

—

Adam has Brad drive Kris to his apartment.

(“If I have to have anyone there with a couple of humans, I’d prefer it be him,” says Adam, to Kris.

And, to Brad, “Nothing happens to him. _Nothing_.”)

Pulling away from the club, Brad turns his SUV toward town and not the city. It surprises Kris for about ten seconds, and then what the creepy Other Vampire Boss said about the city not belonging to anyone clicks in his head, and Kris guesses it makes sense after all. As they drive, Brad keeps glancing at Kris out of the corner of his eyes and giving Kris this… really smug look.

Kris’s ears burn. “What,” he mutters.

“Nothing,” says Brad, airily. “You got laid, didn’t you.”

Wow, the floor of the car is really exciting looking, isn’t it.

“Thought so!” Brad sounds a lot happier than is necessary, Kris feels. “Tommy owes me a hundred bucks.”

Kris’s head jerks back up. “You _bet_ on us?” he hisses. “On _me_?” God, that’s just— just—

Kris is never going to be able to look anybody in the face ever again.

“Oh, relax,” says Brad. He reaches over and pats Kris’s cheek. “Your boyfriend’s the one who told us not to listen in if you guys were alone together.”

Oh, man.

Everything just got, like, eight million times more embarrassing.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Kris mutters, eventually, without thinking about it. It’s almost habit, at this point (he should, uh, think about breaking that). This time, finally, he can hear the lie in it that everyone else does. His ears feel like they’re on _fire_.

“It’s cute that you keep saying that,” says Brad. “Really.”

“He _isn’t_ ,” says Kris, which is just, like, absolutely even less convincing than the first time.

“Yes,” says Brad, gently but firmly, “he totally is.”

Kris opens his mouth.

He closes it again without saying anything.

Brad smiles. “I know, sweetie. I know.”

Then apparently they’re at Adam’s building, because Brad’s pulling over and parking. Kris is just really glad to have a reason to get out of the car.

And promptly stop, because, uhm, hey.

Brad after coming around the front of the car, stops too. “Kris?”

“We’re near my house,” Kris says, feeling unreasonably surprised. “I mean, it’s literally a fifteen minute walk that way.”

Propping a hand on his hip, Brad just says, “So?”

“Why are we fifteen minutes from my parents’ house?”

“Because this is where Adam lives,” says Brad, raising an eyebrow and giving Kris a look that could probably come with the dialogue tag _this one’s not the brightest, is he_. “Are we going in?”

“But why… Yeah, fine, okay.”

Adam’s apartment is on the top floor, which doesn’t surprise Kris, and it looks nothing like the back rooms at Kaleidoscope, which does. Everything is sleek and modern and _tasteful_. Not that Kris is saying the decorations at the club aren’t tasteful, but—

No, actually, Kris is totally saying that.

“She’s in there,” says Brad, pointing down a short hallway toward one of several closed doors. “She’s asleep.”

“Oh.” Kris pauses, one foot down the hallway. “If she’s sleeping, maybe I shouldn’t—”

Brad cuts him off. “She’s been like that all day. She could stand to be woken up. Go on, she wants to see you.”

Kris goes.

The room Brad directed him to is very obviously a guest room of some kind. Katy’s curled up on the twin bed, clutching a pillow to her chest, asleep like Brad said. She doesn’t look particularly relaxed.

“Katy,” whispers Kris. He takes a careful seat on the edge of the bed and gently touches her shoulder. “Hey, Katy.”

She jerks, hard, out from under his hand and almost off the other side of the bed, then goes completely still. She doesn’t open her eyes — actually, she squeezes them more tightly closed, and her arms tighten around the pillow.

“Katy, it’s Kris,” he says, quickly. It’s hard not to let his voice show how badly she’s freaking him out, but he’s proud of how well he manages.

Slowly, she unfreezes. Her eyes open, a little.

“You’re safe,” says Kris. “I promise.”

“Kris?”

Her voice is as rough as it was the night before, weak and a little raspy, but Kris _loves_ that he gets to hear it again.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

He scoots away, giving her room to swing her legs over the edge of the bed and sit next to him. Then, when she lists a little toward him, he moves back. She leans against them, and they just sit there, for a while.

“What happened?” Kris asks, eventually.

He regrets it almost instantly, with the way the question makes her shudder.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he hurries to assure her. “I just. I’d like to know. I’ll listen, if you want to tell me.”

“No,” says Katy, “No, I think I’d— I’d better.”

Kris lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Katy doesn’t start right away. But after a minute, she rubs a hand over her face, and starts talking. “I went to a club in the city. On of the ones I don’t usually go to. I remember dancing, and they turned on this fog machine and— I don’t really remember anything, after that,” she says. Her voice shakes on _don’t really remember_. “I woke up in that warehouse and I had no idea how I got there and I hurt _all over_ and I just. I couldn’t remember, Kris.”

Kris bites the inside of his cheek, and nods. He knows that feeling. _Knows_ it, to his _bones_.

“After a while, a man came in. I thought he was gonna— that I was about to be, be raped, you know.” She stops, swallowing a couple of times. Kris doesn’t hurry her. After a couple minutes, she says, “I tried to get away, but I couldn’t, and then. Then he bit me. It hurt _so much_ , Kris, do you know what it—”

Kris has to look away. He can’t answer what she’s about to ask.

“—Oh. Of course you do.”

“It’s never hurt for me,” he admits, reluctantly. “Never _just_ hurt.”

“No,” she says, barely looking at him. “I guess it wouldn’t, would it.”

He takes her hand, and squeezes it. “What happened, after?”

“I passed out.” Her fingers tremble, for a second. She grips his harder. “And that was… basically all. A bunch of people with fangs, drinking from the Katy buffet, me passing out. Sometimes they gave me something to eat, tried to talk to me, before they— drank from me. But that was really it. Rinse and repeat.”

Kris thinks she’s probably going for flippant, with her tone, but she… doesn’t quite make it. He scoots a little closer, and squeezes her hand again. “That must have been awful.”

“I was sure I was gonna die,” Katy says, and this time, her voice doesn’t sound anything but brittle. “A couple times, I think I kinda wished I just _would_ , already.”

“God, _Katy_ —”

“Then, last night,” she goes on, talking over him (and Kris is almost shamefully _glad_ for that, because he doesn’t know what he would even have said), “last night, there was all that _noise_ and people I hadn’t seen before were in my room and I thought, ‘This is it. This time I really am dead.’”

Kris whispers her name again, feeling sick with horror even though he knows how this ends. He squeezes her hands.

“Except this guy, this _freaking_ guy,” says Katy, her voice breaking on a hollow laugh, “He didn’t bite me, or kill me— no, he got down next to me, and what did he say?”

“What,” asks Kris.

“‘Are you Katy?’” She laughs again. “I nodded, because what the hell else was I going to do, and he— he _smiled_ at me, all gentle, and said, ‘Someone’s been looking for you.’”

Kris bites his lip, his eyes stinging.

Katy leans over and presses her face to his shoulder. “I knew right away, Kris, I _knew_ it was you, that he meant you.”

“Get out. You did not,” he croaks.

“I did,” she insists. “Nobody else I know could make a badass vampire mafia don or whatever the hell he is go fucking _goopy_.”

“I don’t make him goopy,” says Kris. Then, after a second, “What made you think he was a mafia don?”

“The others keep calling him ‘Boss’. Like they’re in an Al Pacino movie or something.”

“Oh.” Kris considers. “Okay, yeah, that’s fair.”

“Yeah. And speaking of _that_.” She reaches up and pokes his chest. “How did that happen? I look away for one minute and suddenly you’re all tight with vampires.”

“I went looking for you. I found them,” says Kris.

“I think I’m glad,” she replies, wrapping her arm around Kris’s waist and holding on.

Kris turns, drops a kiss on the top of her head. And, with his mouth still pressed to her hair, says, “I missed you.”

Against his shoulder, he thinks he feels her smile.

—

Kris barely notices the bouncer out front, much less the line of flashily dressed people waiting to get in, just goes straight past them, through the open door.

By this point, Kris would be surprised if he _didn’t_ immediately get let in.

Jimmy looks surprised when he sees Kris — Kris has never been _alone_ when he goes into the back rooms — but he steps aside right away. He even holds the door for Kris.

Kris finds Adam’s not-exactly-a-throne room without any trouble. And maybe it should worry him, that he knows the way, but he just feels pleased with himself that he remembered.

Standing just in front of his respect-me chair, Adam lights up when Kris enters the room, just like he always does. Like he didn’t drive Kris home last night and kiss him silly in the car outside his house.

“Hello!” Adam says, with a voice as happy as his face. He holds out a hand, and Kris moves so he’s close enough for Adam to settle it on his hip. “I didn’t expect you for at least an hour yet.”

Kris doesn’t look at anybody but Adam. He doesn’t say anything, just looks, and looks, and lets his heart pound.

“… Kris?”

Slowly, Kris drops his eyes. Not that far, not all the way to the floor like he does when he’s embarrassed and uncomfortable; just down Adam’s torso, to his hips. He looks back up and, swallowing, raises his eyebrows.

Something shifts on Adam’s face, and Kris thinks, _yes, good, he’s getting it now_.

“Leave us,” Adam says.

And, because he’s the boss — Kris knows what that _means_ , now — they do.

As the door closes behind the last of Adam’s people — Brad, probably throwing a smirk at them over his shoulder because he’s like that — Adam puts his other hand on Kris’s hips, too. “This is a good look on you,” he says, quiet, and starts to tug Kris closer.

Kris just grins up at him, knowing he’s got to look a little wild, and makes to go to his knees.

Adam grabs him under the elbows, stopping him.

“No, Kris,” he says, too fast, and, “you don’t have to do that.”

“I know.” Kris smiles. He gently pulls his arms out of Adam’s grip. “I want to.”

“You—” Adam breaks off, his eyes dilating with understanding. He licks his lips, runs his tongue over his fangs. “Oh. _Kris_.”

“Yeah?” says Kris. He feels out of breath, eager; bold and a little crazy, but oh God, does he _want_ this.

“You should kneel.”

Kris does.

“ _Fuck_ ,” says Adam, a low hiss. He buries his hand in Kris’s hair and pulls him forward, makes him lean forward as Adam steps in closer, until there’s barely any space between them. Until Kris is face-to-crotch with the really unmistakable bulge in Adam’s pants.

“Oh, god,” and Kris tips himself the rest of the way over, rubbing his face over Adam’s erection through his pants, feeling it grow from half-hard to all-the-way-there. Every time he manages to tear his attention away from Adam’s dick long enough to look up, he catches sight of the way Adam stares down at him with dark, hooded eyes. 

“You look so right like this, so hot. I knew it the first time I saw you, when I made you kneel and you did it like you _wanted_ to,” says Adam. There’s a deepness to his voice that isn’t usually there, a hoarseness. “God, I’ve wanted you like this ever since.”

Kris swallows, fights not to just press his face to Adam’s cock and pretend he can’t hear Adam’s words, and says, “I haven’t— I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Shh,” says Adam, and smiles, complete with a flash of fangs, “I’ve got you.”

Kris licks his lips, and Adam says, “Get my cock out. Go on.”

Kris fumbles Adam’s pants open and starts to tug them down, faltering a second to watch Adam curl a hand around the base of his own cock. Adam doesn’t seem to notice. He cradles Kris’s jaw with his other hand, sets his thumb between Kris’s lips, his teeth, holding his mouth open, and as Kris’s eyes flutter shut, Adam guides his dick into Kris’s mouth.

It’s just the head at first, just the very tip, and then Adam holds it there. Kris opens his eyes, when it starts to get to him that _nothing’s happening_ , and looks up. Adam’s watching him, his lips parted and his breathing shallow. It’s like he’s waiting.

Tentatively, Kris licks at the cockhead in his mouth.

“Yes,” breathes Adam.

Kris does it again. Then again, a little more confidently, swirling the tip of his tongue all the way around it.

Adam moans. He slips his thumb out of Kris’s mouth and rubs the pad of it against the corner of Kris’s wide, stretched mouth.

“Now,” and as he says it Adam cants his hips forward, his dick pushing deeper into Kris’s mouth, sliding across his tongue all hard and thick and heavy, “you suck.”

Kris moans, can’t help it, and tries a little, careful suction, surprised at how it makes Adam seem just that bit bigger, makes him fill Kris’s mouth that much more completely. Adam makes a noise like Kris did something much more than close his lips and suck. His hips start rocking, cock dragging out of his mouth then in again.

“Just like that. Yeah. You’re doing so well, you’re so good for me,” says Adam, hands on Kris’s face a gentle caress in time with his thrusts. “My good little human.”

Kris wants to reply, he really does — there’s so much he could say, could tell Adam about how good this feels, how right, how he loves the taste of Adam and the way he looks like this, above Kris with his eyes half-lidded and his mouth parted around his fangs — but he can’t, he _won’t_ , because that would mean _stopping_. He doesn’t want to stop, he can’t, not when— not when this is _so good_. It feels like fire in his blood, feels better than he thought it would. It feels like it goes on forever. It’s perfect.

He drops his hands completely, lets them rest on his thighs, curl up in weak little fists, while Adam’s hands on him and Adam’s rolling hips control the way his head moves. Kris takes it, closes his eyes, and sucks and _takes it_.

Adam must like it, because eventually he gasps, “I’m gonna, Kris, _Kris_ ,” grabbing Kris’s hair, and pulls out until just the head of his cock is still in Kris’s mouth— and then he’s coming, and coming, hot and bitter on Kris’s tongue, and Kris whimpers and swallows it, his throat working. It’s, Kris doesn’t even know how it feels, Adam above him groaning Kris’s name as he comes for Kris, in Kris, because of something _Kris did_ — And it’s hot, so freaking _hot_ , he’s warm all over, so hard he feels lightheaded and it _aches_. He reaches into his lap, Adam’s dick still full and twitching in his mouth, puts a hand on his crotch and pushes into it once, feels Adam drive back in deep and pulse one last time— and Kris comes in his pants.

“You just—” says Adam, hoarse like _he_ was just the one with something in his mouth. He pulls out, and Kris opens his eyes only to see that Adam looks _wild_ , fierce and otherworldly, and he’s looking at Kris like Kris — flushed and wrecked little human _Kris_ , with stars in his eyes and a wet spot in his jeans — is the amazing one.

He groans, “Oh, Kris, you precious, _precious_ thing,” and tips Kris over onto his back while he’s still shaking with it, his limbs all wonky and his cheeks hot with embarrassment. There’s no chance for him to get really self-conscious about lying vulnerable and debauched or whatever on the floor, though, because Adam follows him down, kneeling to undo Kris’s jeans and yank them off his legs before he splays Kris out on the floor and leans down between his spread knees. He licks, once, over Kris’s spent cock, sticky and gross with come, his fingers digging into the skin of Kris’s hips, and then moves his mouth to Kris’s leg, high up his thigh.

Adam bites.

* * *

“Hey, Mama,” Kris calls, cutting through the kitchen on his way to drop his backpack in his room, before he heads over to Charles’s to ‘spend the night.’ He won’t really be there more than a few hours; Adam said he’d be by to pick Kris up by 11pm, at the latest. Kris is maybe more than a little looking forward to—

“Kristopher,” Mama says. It’s not a good tone.

Kris stops where he is. Stops, and actually looks at her.

His stomach drops.

Mama is sitting at the table, her arms folded over her chest, and in front of her are— are— a pile of Kris’s clothes. Specifically, they’re Kris’s _clothes from that first night he met Adam_. Kris’s bloodstained clothes.

They’re the clothes Kris never got around to washing during those first couple weeks, the clothes he eventually hid because after a while he didn’t _want_ to wash them— wanted to keep them, actually, keep them exactly the way they were, because. Because maybe he was stupid but he felt like they _meant_ something, like they marked the turning point between when Kris was just existing and when he started _living_. (Or that they marked something else significant, at least. After all, it’s not like Adam’s ever gonna let Kris’s blood end up on Kris’s clothes, or anywhere else, again, so.)

Except. Except that Mama doesn’t know what Kris knows, doesn’t even have as much information about the situation as Kris did that morning he woke with a gap in his memories and a mounting pile of evidence that impossible creatures do exist — and without all that, blood on clothes shoved behind a dresser like Kris is ashamed of them pretty much just leads directly to ‘mugging’ or ‘rape’, and no further.

This. This looks bad.

This _is_ bad.

He starts to say, “I can expl—”

“Kristopher.”

Okay, she cut him off, and that’s probably not completely a bad thing because Kris doesn’t really know what BS he was going to spin for her. He can’t tell her the truth, it’s not like she’d _believe_ him if he did, and what is he even supposed to _say_ to—

“You’re dating a vampire,” she says, completely serious, calm and absolutely, utterly _sure_ of herself.

And Kris can only _stare_.

What the _fuck_.

**Author's Note:**

> _Bazinga!_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Ahem.
> 
> Some day, I may write another story, the long, plotty companion-slash-sequel to this, with drama, and vampire politics, and more violence, and all the sex, and Adam’s side of the events of this story, and the history of how he became the coven leader, and what the heck is up with Kris’s Mama and her _knowing_ , and a thorough exploration of exactly how dangerous and ruthless Adam is that he could tell the prideful leader of a coven of killers who are _literally bloodthirsty_ that her options are _submit or die_ and she wouldn’t question it but rather actually _submit_ , and what happens to Allison and Katy and people, and maybe even some angst thrown in there for good measure (who am I kidding, there’s definitely gonna be angst).
> 
> But that day is not today.
> 
>  
> 
>  **eta:** I'm [on tumblr](http://fictionalcandie.tumblr.com) now. It's a thing that's happening. Yep.


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